Big Wheels
by Experimental
Summary: You always say you'll keep in touch. But sometimes it takes a push, a close call, a second chance you never deserved before you can say what needs to be said. Future fic, 13 years after. Various pairings.
1. Chapter 1

Big Wheels

-o-

It was the distant ding of a cabin light that woke him from his deep sleep.

Aware once again of the hum of the shuttle's engines filling his bones, he wanted to sink back into his dream, which was already fading from his memory. Instead, a flight attendant's gentle hand on his shoulder brought him back.

"Sorry to wake you, Mr. Winner, but we have twenty minutes to the beginning of docking proceedings."

Sitting up in his seat, he managed a groggy thank you, and she moved on to the seat behind him.

The aisles were still dim, lights coming up gradually as passengers stirred awake or put away their things. Here and there were brighter spotlights where those who did not or could not sleep were finishing up their work, the glow of a computer screen illuminating faces in the dark. A food cart made its way through the cabin, packed with foil-wrapped quiches stuffed with protein and spinach, insulated zero-gravity cups of coffee, milk, or juice. Body stiff, head a little fuzzy, Quatre found he had little appetite, but could desperately use some caffeine. The stewardess who had awoken Quatre plucked a fountain pen from mid-air, and gently shook its sleeping owner to inform him of their ETA. A businessman in the row behind him read a newspaper hard copy.

Catching sight of the headline on the front page, Quatre turned away.

And out the tiny shuttle window, through his reflection and into the blackness of space.

Their destination, Colony C-421, slowly grew in size outside the spacecraft: a magnificent silver wheel of titanium and carbon fiber, turning gracefully without end through the vacuum. Four main pillars met in the empty space inside, and out of this center on one side, an arm spanned the diameter of the wheel colony like the second hand of a clock, extending into space toward them, waiting to grab hold of a second wheel that was never constructed. As the colony slowly turned, shadows devoured a section at a time, throwing into the sharp relief of space all the bulges and reveals that patterned the outer wall like digital arabesques. Its truly immense size could only be grasped close up; but he liked colonies best like this, when the delicate balance between human perseverance and the elements that made the colonies the miracle they were could fit into the palm of his hand.

Some might say he took them for granted, but that was not how it felt to Quatre. Quite the opposite. That was a lesson he had learned the hardest way; and he knew from personal experience, the number of those who could boast the same was blessedly few.

As they pulled into the shuttle port, a young child sobbed somewhere in the cabin at the change of air pressure in her inner ear, and a middle-aged couple smiled at one another in sympathy. Quatre stuck his coffee cup snuggly in his seat's holder, and put on his glasses. When the other passengers stood to retrieve their carry-on luggage, he pulled out his laptop case and overnight bag and unbuckled his harness, waving an elderly couple ahead of him with a smile. If they recognized him, their grateful nods did not show it.

The young trio of stewardesses who saw him off were a different story, however. One clutched the latest issue of _Today_ to her chest—the same issue stuffed into all the shuttle's magazine pockets—which he paused to sign for her after her coworkers goaded her, blushing furiously, into asking him. With earnest, if awkward, enthusiasm, she swore she would vote for him if she were a citizen of L4. The sounds of her coworkers' giggling as he departed made him smile and shake his head, but not altogether in amusement.

He had barely set foot inside the terminal when—

"There he is, the man of the hour!"

Quatre started. So much for traveling incognito. He looked around to see who had recognized him, and completely missed the man rushing up beside him to seize him in a great bear hug.

It took only a split second to identify his attacker by his unmistakable braid, if nothing else. Quatre laughed, and managed to pull himself away to arm's length. "Duo, you old pirate! Why didn't you tell me you were going to be here?"

"I wanted it to be a surprise."

"Well, you succeeded! But could you try not to let the whole colony know I'm here?"

Duo chuckled. Some of the disembarking passengers glanced their way as they passed, but none lingered on them too long. "Sorry, man. I get it: you're going incognito."

Duo raised an eyebrow at Quatre's temporarily brown hair—which, in Quatre's opinion, made him look uncannily like his father. His face had thinned out some, and though at 190 centimeters he wasn't as tall as his father, the height genes had made their presence loud and clear in his late teens. At the moment he wore a wool sweater over an oxford shirt and pressed slacks. His slightly darkened lenses were a little too large for his face, which prompted Duo to pluck them off him, quite to Quatre's embarrassment. "You're wearing glasses now, Q?" He looked through them and started. "Hey, these are prescription."

"They're just for reading," Quatre said, taking them back. "And traveling undercover."

Duo shook his head. "Boy . . . I don't care what you say, it still makes me feel like I'm getting old. No offense, of course. But, man— It really has been a while, hasn't it?"

"Sure has."

Quatre sighed. It felt good to see his old comrade again. They kept in touch regularly by phone and mail, but he couldn't pinpoint the last time he saw Duo in person, only that it must have been about three years ago. As he had expected, Duo had hardly changed a bit. He had gained weight, almost all of it muscle. He still had his braid, though a bit shorter than it had been during the war. He still resisted any outside attempt by color to infiltrate his wardrobe. The smile that was never absent from his wide, violet eyes was not clouded by the kind of deeper troubles that Quatre felt must show in his own. If peacetime had been good to any one of them, it was Duo. Whenever Quatre talked to him, it seemed things were going well, even when they weren't.

All at once, it hit Quatre how much he had missed that optimism of Duo's. He couldn't wait to catch up.

Hilde was waiting for them when they finally moved away from the flow of traffic. "Love the glasses," she told Quatre with just a touch of sarcasm before reaching up to hug him on tip-toes.

Duo had to add: "They're prescription."

Hilde gasped as she pulled back. "No! Quatre, you're getting old!"

It sure felt that way. From being a fifteen-year-old gundam pilot in the war, to attending university as a teenager, the lengthy legal process of working out his inheritance, side projects in construction and taking over the family business, and now running for office, the last decade had been busy enough for a lifetime.

In fact, it seemed at once a lifetime and yesterday since he and the other gundam pilots had last been together, an eternally frozen continuum in the back of his mind forged by hard times. He _did_ feel older; but the television screens, the newspapers and magazine covers on the newsstands they passed, reminded him with almost embarrassing clarity that he was still a young man of twenty-eight—whose touted movie star good looks and few trillion dollars to his name didn't hurt either.

"So, did you have any plans for when you arrived in the colony?" Duo asked him as the three made their way to the car. "Trowa's not due in till later tonight."

Quatre shrugged. "I was just going to check into my room and take a load off until then. But that was before I knew you'd be waiting for me when I got here." He smiled. "I take it you two have something else in mind."

"Nah. I mean, we were hoping for a chance to catch up, but there'll be plenty of time for it tonight. You need your rest."

"We'll give you a lift," Hilde said. "We can catch up on the way. By the way, have you eaten?"

When the two found out Quatre hadn't, they wouldn't take no for an answer. It was still early in the day, and Duo and Hilde knew this little place near their hotel that had proved a hit with them the day before. They insisted they treat him, even threatening to lock the car doors so he couldn't escape, and Quatre could do nothing except call to make arrangements for his bags to be sent ahead of him to the hotel and apologize for the inconvenience.

Sitting in the passenger seat beside Duo, listening to him and Hilde feed off each other's quips, Quatre had to marvel at his old friend's efficiency in getting him out of the spaceport and fed before anyone chanced to recognize him.

After three years of marriage, and a six-year on-again-off-again courtship they had denied for six years as being any such thing, Duo and Hilde still operated like a well-oiled machine. Naturally, everyone had seen it before them. Which was why no one had been as surprised as the two thought they would be when they finally announced they were engaged. If anyone had been surprised by anything, it was that they had waited so long. "We didn't feel there was any need to rush," Hilde had said by way of explanation. "We're still young." If anything their relationship seemed to benefit from the wait.

"But we won't be young forever," Duo would inevitably add as an aside.

Which was why when they told Quatre of their engagement, he insisted on paying for the wedding, small and just-family-and-friends as the two told him time and time again it had to be. By that time he had already put most of his legal battles behind him and was working with his sisters to rebuild the Winner enterprise as it had been under their father's charge. It was the least he could do for an old friend, yet Duo remained adamant he would someday, in some way, pay Quatre back. Even if it was just a little at a time.

-o-

"It had to have been two-oh-five," Duo was saying, half to himself, as they sat at a booth in the cafe. "Let's see, we were married in April . . ."

Hilde turned to him, twisting the straw in her lemonade absently. "Wasn't it July of that year? The last time we talked face-to-face. We ran into each other at that place in Ptolemaios, completely by accident. Remember? And to think, Quatre, if I had had my way, he wouldn't have even gone into that store. We said we were going to try to get together again soon after that, but somehow we all got too busy to arrange anything."

"So, it's been three years," Quatre said. "It doesn't seem that long."

"Amazing how time flies."

"Have you seen any of the others since then?" he asked, and sipped his coffee. He didn't need to specify: any of the others from the war.

"Trowa's been by a couple times," Duo told him. "Ever since he quit performing, though, it's been tough for him to find time off work to meet. We get Christmas cards and stuff from Sally and Ms. Une. You know, from that stint with the Preventers. I don't think I've heard from Wufei at all since the wedding." He glanced Hilde's way for confirmation. "Or before, for that matter. To tell the truth, I was surprised he came at all. But then, you know how Wufei is."

"Yeah, I know." It didn't surprise Quatre that he said nothing about Heero. They hadn't seen or heard from him since shortly after the war on Christmas Eve, 196.

"What about you?" Hilde asked, leaning across the table.

"I run into Relena on occasion," Quatre said. "Our work takes us to a lot of the same places. Conferences, opening ceremonies, big society galas. That sort of thing. Ball games."

"Ball games?" Duo snorted.

Quatre shrugged, a wry smile on his lips. "When you get to be on the cover of _Today, _Duo, you'll learn a thing or two about diplomacy and public appearances right quick. Anyway, it's the same with Dorothy and Une. Aside from the ball games."

Hilde gave him a sympathetic look. "But I bet you guys don't get much time to talk."

"No. We don't."

"_So-o-o_. Are you seeing anyone?"

Her question came with such nonchalance, its suddenness didn't faze Quatre. But Duo looked embarrassed for him as he leaned closer to her and said, "Hil, don't ask the man a question like that. Not after he's just been on a twenty-hour flight. And, for that matter, after just about every reporter on- _and _off-planet has asked him the same question."

"I can _read_, Duo, thank you very much. But that's not something a person can just go and spill to the whole Earth Sphere. However, we're all friends here, so . . ." She wiggled an eyebrow. "The dirty, if you please?"

Quatre made her squirm for another moment before giving in: "No, I'm not seeing anyone."

"Aw, that's a shame."

"Knowing Quatre, he'd say he was too busy for something like that," Duo teased. "He's got a huge multinational corporation to run, all these charities and conferences to go to—not to mention the campaign. Not that he doesn't have the same natural urges as the rest of us―"

"And now I'm to be one of the main speakers at this exhibit opening," Quatre added, eager to change the subject. "I'm looking forward to that."

"That's right. Thursday evening. Have you written my speech yet?"

Quatre chuckled. "You mean _my _speech, Duo? And yes, I've already written it. But I'm not going to spoil the surprise. You haven't changed your mind about speaking, have you?"

"No." Duo sighed. "I think seven speakers will be more than enough for even this gala. Plus, I don't think anyone wants to sit and listen to me blunder my way through some script when there's some damn sexy marvels of engineering to be looking at. I'm just going to make you guys look good."

Hilde rolled her eyes, but Quatre understood. It wasn't simply that they came from different worlds. Just because someone is a good storyteller doesn't mean they're good at public speaking. Case in point, Quatre considered himself the complete opposite.

They paused as the waiter came by to take their orders and refill the men's coffees. When he left, Duo sobered.

"I have to tell you," he said, "Hilde and I were really surprised when you came out about . . . Well, you know."

Quatre stopped stirring his coffee. But he hesitated to meet Duo's eyes. "Why's that?"

"Well, for one thing, because out of all of us you're the only one who ever had much of a choice. We all knew Wufei would have to disclose his involvement, given his position in the Preventers, and with Trowa it more or less went with the business. Heero doesn't really count because he disappeared. . . . But _you_ had the most to lose."

Duo leaned forward, and his meaning was clear in his eyes.

"Have you decided what you're going to do about Zero?"

"Not yet," Quatre said. "I'm not looking forward to it, but I'll have to make a decision soon. As for the rest, though—well, it was going to come out sooner or later. Yes, I had a choice. But the way I saw it, I had only two options: I could either tell the world myself, or have my opponent out me in a way I would have no control over. I think anyone in my position would chose the former."

"I guess you're right. I mean, to be fair, it's also pretty amazing you've kept it under wraps for so long."

"And that had a lot to do with my decision." Quatre folded his hands on the table. "I've come to a point in my life where I don't _want _to hide who I was anymore. Things have changed since then, but I'm still the person I was. Just wiser, and eager to atone for my actions. For a long time, I was ashamed of what I did, and it was easier to stay silent, to hide. But then I guess I reached a point where _not_ being able to tell anyone was what really tore me up inside.

"I like to think that we've come to a point, as a people, where we can look back on the war with more objective eyes. Yes, some of us did truly terrible things and, yes, we made terrible decisions that hurt a great many people_. _For that, I can't expect that I can ever be forgiven. But at least it's a little easier to look back and say, these were our reasons for doing what we did, without it having to hurt so much."

"But it still hurts," Duo said.

Quatre nodded. "That's why I expected people to be more outraged than they were. I don't quite understand it myself. But you'll hear it a lot this week if you turn on the news. I guarantee it. There's a great number of people, many of them colonists themselves, who are saying the colonies share blame for giving rise to the gundams. The truth is, they'd rather take responsibility for us than White Fang. But in hindsight, there's a growing consensus that the colonies should have done more. It was their own autonomy that was at stake, after all."

"That was my experience on MO-II," Hilde said. "After White Fang, a lot of people still thought of the gundams as terrorists, even if they were the lesser of two evils. You guys really embodied the anger and frustration the colonies felt at heart but were too afraid to express. It was Mariemaia's war that made you five heroes," she said as she looked from her husband to Quatre. "So this new show of support for the gundams doesn't surprise me at all.

"I think this could actually help you quite a bit, Quatre. Hell, you broke the story yourself, so you've got timing working to your advantage. That took balls—and frankly," she added to Duo's laughter and a shake of the head, "balls are what people are looking for in a candidate. You're in a position now where the media's going to be more likely to believe your interpretation of what happened, if someone were to come along telling a different story."

"Take my advice, Quatre, and listen to this woman," Duo said, pointing a thumb at Hilde. "She really knows how to pick 'em. Honest to God, I can't tell you how many bets I've lost to her when it comes time for elections. I've just about got ironing down to a science."

Quatre cracked a smile. "I'm glad you're on my side, then."

"You know, it's not just Hil. I think Trowa's really counting on you to come through for him. He seems to think you getting elected is the only way he's ever going to see his pet project realized, what with Relena being so dead set against it."

"She's not 'dead set,' she's―" Quatre snorted. "God, Duo, is that what he said?"

Duo gave him his best innocent look. "Well, not to the press."

"Damn." Quatre sighed, but he couldn't quite wipe the grin from his face. Nor could he quite contain the excitement that suddenly pervaded his voice. "Christ, Duo, Trowa and I . . . We haven't spoken to one another in _years_. And now I think I'm going to kill him when I see him."

-o-

It was a little past noon when they dropped Quatre off at his hotel.

It was cool and drizzling in the colony―the forecast warned showers were scheduled off-and-on for the entire week―but under the carport there was no need to rush, making sure for the dozenth time that Duo and Hilde could find their way back that evening to pick him up.

The hotel was the finest in this part of the colony, one that prided itself on having served all the big-name politicians, business tycoons, and popular celebrities in its few years of operation. The interior was warm with rich colors and chic textures, potted plants and flattering, indirect lighting.

His suite was not much different.

A sitting area with a plush sofa and an oversized television. A gleaming kitchenette and bar counter. Even a raised area in front of the floor-to-ceiling windows in which a dining table large enough to seat six comfortably was fit, apparently with the intention it could double as a conference space. Beyond that was a balcony, which he doubted would be getting much use during this wet spell. Across from the kitchenette, the bedroom—king mattress, full wardrobe, another TV—connected to a bathroom which seemed, rather unnecessarily, twice as large.

All in all, it wasn't bad. His secretary had, diligently as always, made sure he would be well taken care of. His luggage had arrived, stacked neatly by the nearest arm of the sofa. The refrigerator was stocked with a variety of juices, bottled water, and alcohol, the cabinets and drawers with stoneware and cooking utensils. There was a kettle and a coffee maker. He brewed himself a strong pot and settled down on one side of the overstuffed sofa to read the itinerary she had also had faxed over earlier that day. It was waiting for him on the coffee table when he arrived, along with a letter from the concierge.

He had a driver to take him to his various appointments, but thanks to Duo's generosity, Quatre wouldn't need the man until tomorrow. Then there would be no more free rides from his friends.

He planned on using the rest of the day to catch up on work, practice the speech he would be giving at the museum gala on Thursday evening. No doubt there would be journalists there pressing him for interviews, meaning he might as well count on no sleep that night, and the following day he had agreed to speak at an outdoor fund-raising event. Its goal was to raise awareness of the impact of a less than 1-G environment on child development, a topic that hit close to home. The same organization also studied degenerative disease and fertility problems associated with long-term space living, the latter of which had been a problem in his own family for generations.

But he was actually looking forward to those two days and their tight schedule. It was the interviews to come in the days after he was not so keen on. The news that he had been one of the five gundam pilots in the war still stung many across the Earth Sphere like a freshly reopened wound. No doubt the major media outlets would find some way to work the exhibit opening into some already-brewing theory of his possible ulterior motives, before he was due to appear on their respective television programs.

Just thinking about the inevitable and he could feel a tension headache starting to come on. He put the itinerary and the coffee cup down, leaned back in the sofa. His gaze drifted to the gray, wet world outside the window.

The glass was well sound-proofed, but the image itself was mesmerizing in its melancholy. Funny how our strongest memories can be tied so tightly to the weather, he mused. Or maybe it was only because, in the colonies, a sunny day was easy. Rain took a little more talent, and luck. Not unlike human relationships. . . .

Feeling drowsy watching the weather, he decided it would be all right to rest his eyes for a few minutes.

It turned, as such things inevitably do, into a two hour nap.

After chastising himself for his laziness—an old habit that died hard, never mind that tonight he was on vacation—he took another quick inventory of the kitchenette cabinets, jotted down a few items he would need for a quick dinner on his palmtop, and unpacked a heavier jacket from his suitcase. Safe behind his glasses and brown hair, he walked down to a corner market, finding himself renewed and reinvigorated by the rain on his head and the fresh produce at his fingertips.

For a man in his position, to be in control of these seemingly minor things for the first time in a long time was a bigger deal than he could ever explain.

-o-

The club was called Receiver. This seemed an appropriate name for an establishment that had, within walking distance, the closest bar to the spaceport without being actually in it. It jutted out from a corner of a massive shopping complex, overlooking a maglev line that threaded like an artery into the center of downtown from the port, as though the place were literally a terminal for the transfer of carbon and oxygen as well as people and their money. The music it played was smooth, the decor an easy-on-the-eyes soft neon blue for all those travel-weary eyes still trying to adjust from the dark of space.

Apparently it was a slow time at the port, or else just a slow day for a club like Receiver. There were lone travelers at the bar, some businessmen and -women laughing in the booths. They had no problem finding Trowa. He waved them over from his own booth, where he sat between Relena and Dorothy.

About three years ago―at least, so Quatre judged from his friends' wedding―Trowa had finally allowed his face to be seen by the world. All of it at once. No more hiding behind a mask of brushed-forward hair. Though it was still brushed forward, it was shorter and borderline normal, and had the unexpected effect of making him look younger. Of all of them, he could still pass for a teenager at twenty-nine. Of all of them, in the right light, any waitress would card him just to make sure those brilliant olive green eyes did not belong to one Dorian Gray. Likewise, his simple, stylish clothes did not age him, but accomplished quite the opposite effect. His posture was relaxed, his movements imbued with a certain laziness as he lifted an arm to hail them.

On one side sat Dorothy, her long, pale blond hair pulled back in a thick, loose braid, her lips glossed to a high polish. She wore a thin cashmere turtleneck, but rather than being conservative the shirt clung shamelessly to every curve. A flirtatious grace was hardwired into her every expression and movement, so it seemed to Quatre that one who didn't know her so well might take her grin of recognition to be cold and insincere. He, however, found it as welcoming as a warm embrace―a thing which, on the other hand, coming from her, he would have had to take with a rather large grain of salt.

On Trowa's other side, Relena looked like the odd one out in a two-piece suit and her own un-made-up beauty. She had exchanged her girlishly long hair some time ago for a bob that framed her face in a more mature fashion, though she remained attached to the habit of pinning back the sides, as though to better free her eyes for all the goings-on in the world around her. The smile she gave the newcomers was one he recognized instantly: he had been guilty of it too many times himself. Inside, the heart racing with the fear of saying the wrong thing to someone you felt you should have been a better friend to.

Before them, their drinks sat half drunk and mostly ice. Not the hugging types, the three scooted closer together at Dorothy's prompting to make room for the newcomers. There was plenty of room. The way she pushed against Trowa's ribs seemed to Quatre a bit presumptuous, even for her, but Trowa let out a small grunt of a laugh at it that made Quatre forget about anything else.

As everyone shuffled into place, they exchanged the typical greetings. Expressing the passing of time in the requisite ways, the empty shows of regret they hadn't run into each other sooner that only seemed emptier with each passing year.

Ordering drinks, Hilde insisting hers be extra-virgin. Trowa asking the others as though just remembering to do so: "Have you guys eaten yet? 'Cause we haven't had anything since that lousy stuff they tried to pass off as dinner on the shuttle four hours ago." He gestured between himself and Dorothy.

"Sorry, we just had dinner," said Duo, to which Hilde added eagerly, "But we can always help you clean up."

"You two came in together?" Quatre asked Trowa when Dorothy had finished ordering a variety small plates, nodding to the two of them. "That's convenient."

Trowa and Dorothy exchanged a look.

"Well, that was more or less the point," Dorothy said.

Whatever she meant by it, Quatre was in no hurry to find out. Trowa seemed lighter than the last time they met—not just in mood, but as if his whole person were operating in a different level of gravity from those around him. His complexion seemed healthier than usual, brighter, and overall Quatre would have called it an improvement. Becoming a civilian had been hard on Trowa, Quatre knew, in some ways even harder than it had been for Wufei, who at least had the Preventers to give his life a new meaning. It must be this new project of his, Quatre decided. Trowa always had been happiest when working with his hands. . . .

"I mean it, Hilde," he was saying to Duo's blushing bride, who always had had a bit of a soft spot for Trowa. "Something seems different. If it's not your hair, then what? Hey. Why're you blushing?"

"You mean glowing, don't you?" Duo tried.

Which earned him a halfhearted slap on the arm from Hilde. "You two. You're both the same, you shameless flatterers. It's all this weight I've been gaining! I know, I know, it's still too early to worry about that, but I've always been kind of a petite woman, and I swear these things show!"

Trowa stopped his joshing, and even Quatre blinked out of his reverie. "Wait," Relena said. "Do you mean . . ."

"Are you . . ." Dorothy began.

To their surprise, it was Duo who turned red as a beet. "That's right, slimes. It's official. I'm gonna be a daddy."

"We're pregnant," Hilde chimed in. She positively beamed. "Only eight weeks, but still. . . ."

That was all the rest of the table needed to break into cries of congratulations. The girls rushed Hilde with questions about the baby, and Quatre must have joined in, but in his shock to hear the good news he wasn't sure what he actually said.

Trowa couldn't keep the grin off his face as he leaned across the table to shake Duo's hand. "I can't believe _you're _going to be a father, Duo. I can't imagine _any _of us—"

"I know, right? That little spud's gonna need all the help he can get."

"Whatever." Dorothy waved that last remark off. "We all know that kid's going to be one lucky little bastard with you two for her parents."

"Or him!" Duo cried petulantly.

Quatre laughed. "I can drink to that. Whichever he or she turns out to be. I, for one, couldn't think of any two people more deserving of the utmost happiness. So, congratulations, you two."

After a round of here-here's and a clinking of glasses, Dorothy took Hilde's arm in the most sisterly manner she could manage.

"Well," she said to the table, "not to steal your thunder, of course, but I just thought, while we're on the subject, I have a bit of an announcement to make myself―"

"Oh, no," Trowa groaned, lowering his head. "I thought we agreed we weren't going to say anything tonight."

He looked genuinely mortified, his old shyness coming back to him with a vengeance. Of course, having said such a thing only made the rest more curious. Duo laughed, and Quatre couldn't help going along with him. The former leaned back in his seat. "Ah-ah, shouldn't have said that, Trowa. Now you guys have no choice but to tell us."

"We were going to wait until the right time."

"Hey, so were we!"

Ignoring Duo, Trowa shot a nervous look at Quatre, as though begging him with his eyes to intercede for him. If Quatre hadn't been in such a good mood, he might have recognized the look in his old friend's eyes as a look of genuine terror.

But Quatre only shrugged, thinking that if they had come to some new decision on their joint project, it couldn't hurt to say it now, among friends.

Dorothy rolled her eyes. "What is it with men? I thought _asking_ was the tough part. Is it really so hard to tell your own best friends when you've gotten engaged?"

As she annunciated the last word, her left hand came out from beneath the table, and that was when the other four finally noticed the ring. A simple band, it had been easy to miss, but now Quatre wished to god he hadn't missed it.

Hilde covered her mouth and laughed. Relena leaned forward and said, "Are you serious?" grabbing Dorothy's hand to take a closer look for herself. Duo muttered something to Trowa along the lines of "way to go, buddy."

As for Quatre, it seemed all he could do was stare while a million disorganized questions bubbled in his mind, and his lips could only manage the least common denominator:

"What?"

His voice sounded small to his own ears. He felt the smile stick to the corners of his mouth, though it had already fallen from the rest of his face. Glancing around the table, he locked eyes with Trowa, who alone out of their group was not smiling back.

"We're getting married," he clarified, for Quatre alone. "Dorothy and I."

* * *

**Note:** Yes, apparently this is one of those anime where a change in hair color and some fancy shades can make you unrecognizable to strangers. Quatre's father was tall as shit, so Quatre is tall. It's genetics. Well, technically it's space living and genetics. Consider this my official response to the doujinshi. Also, whether it is canonical or fanonical, this is a universe in which the gundam pilots put in some hours for the Preventers. Obviously, some put in more hours than others. . . .

For anyone interested, the title comes from the song of the same name by Electric Light Orchestra off their _Out of the Blue_ album. It was sort of an anthem for me at the time I started this, roundabout 2002, and it sticks even now. The big wheel of the lyric is, in short, a wheel of karma―action and consequence going round―but Jeff Lynne has described it as evocative of drifting through space (on a big, wheel-shaped spaceship, perhaps?). I'll let readers decide how best to interpret those words, "big wheels," but I do highly recommend the song.


	2. Chapter 2

The table swayed. The whole club seemed to lift and settle, as if it were on rails itself. He felt like he was going to be sick in front of everyone. Until he realized it wasn't his stomach that was bothering him.

It was painful, but Quatre managed a smile. "That's great. Great news." He was sure the words sounded as disingenuous to everyone else as they did to his own ears.

If they did, no one showed it. No one except Trowa, who tried to send him an apologetic glance across the others' excited chatter. Just not, in Quatre's opinion, apologetic enough.

"I want all the details," Hilde said to Trowa, stealing his attention away. "How did you do it?"

"How'd I do what?"

"Propose, of course, you joker! What did you think I meant?" Before Trowa could answer, however—and he didn't seem particularly eager to do that—Duo gestured for him to nix it. "You don't have to go into it now, man. Save it for the ceremony or something."

"What's your problem? You afraid I'm going to compare my notes on you two?"

"Actually, yes, that's exactly what I'm afraid of. You know I've always been jealous of this guy."

"Jesus, Duo, I think you can stop worrying about that _now,_" Hilde said, gesturing to her abdomen._ "_I think we more or less settled this matter beyond question, don't you?"

Dorothy laughed at that, and said something to the effect that both of them were lucky women, but Quatre had tuned out the bulk of the conversation by then. He was having a hard enough time accepting this reality. It was too surreal, better left to a crazy dream. His two old friends, who had never overlapped within his life except for one moment more than twelve years ago, now tying the knot. How had this happened?

Only now did he realize how little thought he had given over the past decade to his friends' lives, outside of those few times their paths intersected. Could he really have let himself believe that Trowa would be no different now from when Quatre last left him, a fellow lonely groomsman at the altar of their best friend's wedding? Not that he had done anything to deserve it, let alone to nurture their relationship with regular correspondence, but—

Still, somehow, he'd believed all this time that he might someday get a second chance. And now that too was slipping away right before his eyes.

"What do you think?" Duo was saying. "One more round, for the two happy couples? It's on me."

"Thanks, but no thanks," Relena demurred. "I think I'd better turn in. It's been a long flight and we all need as much rest as we can get before the big day. Quatre? Would you like a ride?"

Quatre shook himself back to the present. It would be just like Relena to read his mood, but it still surprised him that she seemed to know without a word between them that he needed an escape.

When Duo assured him half a dozen times that he didn't mind, he would make sure Trowa and Dorothy were delivered to their hotel, Quatre begged their pardon, and fled. He knew better than to waste the opportunity.

"How are _you _doing, Quatre?" Relena said once settled in the car, a driver who Quatre was a little disappointed to see was not Pagan taking them to his hotel.

Their conversation in the club still running circles in his mind, Quatre sighed. "That's a long and complicated story. You sure you want to hear it?"

It was another moment before he realized she hadn't been referring to Dorothy's announcement. "Only if you feel like telling it. It just seemed to me that, with all this news of marriage and babies, no one bothered to ask how you were holding together. It was a difficult thing to do, what you did. A dangerous thing, frankly. I can only imagine what you're going through."

If anyone knew how he felt, though, Quatre was sure it would be Relena.

"You mean the celebrity treatment wherever I go?" he said.

"I was referring to the added security measures, the death threats and paparazzi, and being dissected on-air by so-called experts who haven't the faintest inkling of what you've had to struggle through your entire life." But his sarcasm wasn't completely lost on Relena. She couldn't quite stifle her smile. "That was quite a cover story, though. 'Unbeatable Winner.' I couldn't have worded it any better myself."

He returned her smile, but it wasn't without an ounce of bitterness. "One for the history books."

"It's a flattering story. And photo, for that matter."

"It's embarrassing, is what it is."

"Well, I find it fitting for someone who admits to being a gundam pilot one day, then turns around and sponsors a project like _this _without missing a beat. Only you, Quatre Winner, would follow what you believe in without worrying whether your motives are going to be misunderstood."

"Of course I worry about being misunderstood. But I can't let that stop me. It wouldn't stop _you_, if it were something you believed in as strongly as I do this."

Relena turned to look at him then—to really look at him, searching his face for the answer she didn't trust him to give her in words. Paused in the middle of rubbing a kink out of her neck, lips pressed together in thought, a glimmer of the quick-witted and feisty girl he had come to know so well during the war shone back through at last. She was good with people, any fool with eyes could see that, but among his circle of friends, she was the odd one out. This, now, was the Relena Darlian he considered his dearest ally and fairest critic, the Relena Darlian who didn't pull her punches when someone had them coming.

"You and Trowa," she sighed. "You two have more faith in humanity's powers of restraint than even _I _do—"

"And that seems a bit backwards to you?"

Relena blinked. "No, that isn't what I meant. I guess I just feel like someone with his background should know better."

Quatre didn't know what to say to that, so he said nothing. She must have been thinking over her words, because she amended, "Please don't tell him I said that, Quatre. The last thing we both need right now is more public animosity between us. Besides, it's not as though I'm in any position to judge."

-o-

"But he's a public figure, whose company either owns or has holdings in the vast majority of the resource satellites that are essential for further space development. On top of which, he's running for the top political office in the L4 Cluster. Judging is exactly what we _should _be doing. It's our duty as journalists to take our leaders to task when their behavior is shown to be reprehensible. Look. This guy just admitted to the whole world sphere of being one of biggest terrorists of recent history. Whatever your perspective is, you have to acknowledge that much. I mean, you _have_ to acknowledge that. Am I right?"

"Well . . . Alright, yes, the gundams were, I suppose, by definition, the instruments of a terrorist organization during the first Eve War. But don't you think he's proved himself to be a lot more than that since then? I mean, we're talking events that happened twelve, almost thirteen years ago."

"Does that mean every murderer who gives to a few charities should be excused of his crimes? Are you going to put a statute of limitations on war crimes? I think most people would agree with me here that that would be insane. But what does the Earth Sphere do with Winner when this information comes out? Slap him in irons? Charge him with crimes against humanity? No, of course not. They slap him on the cover of _Today _like he's some sort of rock star and call him a hero!"

"But Winner even says about that, in the article, and I quote: 'If I thought surrendering myself to the ESUN would bring any justice to those who were hurt by my actions, I would, but I could accomplish next to nothing from a prison cell or the gallows.' He goes on to discuss all the humanitarian work he's been involved in over the past decade—the rebuilding of colonies damaged during the war, for example. I see you aren't exactly buying this."

"I'm not, Jack. He knows what people want to hear, and I don't see how any of it indicates remorse. Of course Winner doesn't want to be brought up on war crimes. Who would? What I don't think most people realize is that no one has more resources at his disposal—and the connections, let me remind you, within the sitting government, to keep himself out of court than Quatre Raberba Winner."

"Are you suggesting now that he's bought off leaders? Is that what you're suggesting, a conspiracy theory?"

"Not a theory, Jack. There is a long history of collusion between the Winner family and the Barton Foundation, the Khushrenadas—hell, the _Romefellers_—"

"The late President Winner counted the Sanc Kingdom and other prominent pacifists as allies, as well. In fact, if I remember right, it was his refusal to allow his corporation's resource satellites to be used for military purposes that lead directly to his death. I'm just not sure your trying to paint the Winners as a dynasty of warmongers has much legitimate merit."

At last, Quatre could take no more and flipped the channel. He'd already lost what little appetite he'd had this morning, his breakfast sent up from the hotel kitchen sitting only partially eaten in front of him. The last thing he needed at the start of his busy day was to listen to pundits whom he had never met question his father's character as well as his own.

He flipped through a cooking show and a station running repeats of dramatic serials, but both only made him feel like he was avoiding responsibility. After all, he had chosen this path for himself. He had a duty to know what the news media was saying about him, if he wanted to be prepared when they hit him with the hard questions, let alone rumors and conspiracy theories.

He sighed and took another sip of his coffee, and settled on a local news station. The weather report was on. More rain in the forecast, though it was scheduled to break just in time for the exhibit opening. Someone must have pulled some strings, warned the appropriate parties of all the unhappy dignitaries there would be if their wives' expensive gowns were ruined by showers.

Deciding he was done with breakfast, he finished dressing, running his hand through his hair which would remain brown for one more day in an attempt to escape the press. He'd get his fill of them—or rather, they of him—tomorrow night at the gala.

Perhaps it was something the television pundits had said getting under his skin, but the darker shade did make him look like his father. Not as Quatre remembered him, but as he looked in pictures. Something in the shape of his chin, or the line of his nose. For all Quatre had been told as a child that he resembled his mother, he had no doubt that if he were to grow a mustache, he would be the spitting image of the late Zayeed Winner. He toyed with the idea—and the part of his hair—for all of a minute, musing it was almost worth it, just to hear the reaction from his father's old political rivals.

He muted the television, poured himself the last of the coffee, and made a call to his secretary back on L4. Yes, he had seen the news, he assured her, and no, he wasn't worried by reports of his narrowing lead in the polls. Though he couldn't say he shared her unwavering optimism. Optimism was not what he paid her for, but she acted as though it were her primary duty nonetheless, like some sort of personal shaman who cast her circle of protection with poll numbers and industry forecasts instead of magical herbs and powders.

He had to cut the call short—shorter than his secretary wanted, anyway. He was due to meet his driver and head to his first appointment.

His driver was one Henry Sakamoto, a man somewhat small of stature, whose long face and salt-and-pepper hair gave only a vague indication of his age. As far as Quatre had been told, Sakamoto had once worked for his father—another eerily timely reminder of the man that Quatre shrugged off as coincidence. It was Rashid, in fact, who had contacted him, when Quatre had insisted against his old body guard's better judgment on keeping his personal security for this trip light. The least Quatre could do, he said, was hire a damn good driver. Though by now, Quatre thought, if he worked for Father more than two decades ago, he couldn't remember me.

But Sakamoto recognized him right away, even beneath his simple disguise and the passing of the years.

"They sure do grow you Winner boys big. Wasn't all that long ago you were only yea tall," he said, indicating some height below his own waist as he opened the car door for Quatre. "Now I feel like a Leprechaun just looking at you."

Quatre hated to admit he had been too young to remember the man, so he didn't.

-o-

The exhibit was designed to leave a powerful emotional impact on all who entered the Museum of Aerospace Technology and History, from the very first object they laid eyes on.

An old UESA Space Leo dragged itself across a gray and pockmarked lunar landscape, its legs lost, most likely blown away, scorched wires spilling from what remained of its chassis. One arm raised it up while the other reached, charred, missing fingers, for some unseen goal far above toward the rotunda ceiling—perhaps, one imagined, for some memory of home its pilot's oxygen-starved brain conjured upon the blank field of space with his dying breaths.

The scene had been staged, and yet it seemed to Quatre, gazing up at it, as if the display had been transported here whole from that place and time, now thirteen years distant, and the mobile suit would creak and grind to life at any moment. Its battle wounds, the scores of beam cannon shots and machine gun rounds, the bubbling of its standard violet paint that he could almost smell, burning, in the back of his nostrils like he was fifteen again—it was all too realistic.

And just like Trowa.

Relena would appreciate the attention to detail, Quatre thought. It was sure to scare a lot of people back toward the stance of total pacifism that had pervaded immediately following the second Eve War. But for Trowa, he knew, it wouldn't be about public perception, or feeling. It would be about accuracy, plain and simple.

"Sure knows how to make an entrance, doesn't he?"

Quatre turned. He had heard footsteps approaching, but didn't know they were coming for him until the man had spoken. He was about Quatre's same height, curly dark hair swept back behind his ears, and as he approached, his gaze remained fixed on the mobile suit.

Until he came abreast of Quatre, and extended a hand. "Mr. Winner, I take it? I thought you looked familiar, even with the . . ." He gestured to his own hair.

Quatre smiled and took his hand, shaking it heartily. "Trowa too busy to meet me himself?"

"You know how he is." There was more than just a note of resentment in the other's voice. But it was an old resentment, one that hung around stubbornly, out of force of habit, even after attitudes had changed. "Nichol," the man said by way of introduction, leaving Quatre wondering if that was a first or last name. He nodded back to the mobile suit. "These old Leos are the whole reason I enlisted. Strange, isn't it, that someone would sign up to pilot the very machines responsible for oppressing him? I guess in that way, you and I weren't really so different after all."

"You're from the colonies?" Quatre said, raising a brow.

Nichol's shrug wasn't entirely an answer. "I believed in OZ, though, unlike you gundam pilots. I believed it could succeed where the Alliance had failed so miserably. We wanted to clean up space, to lead others who felt the same way we did." Nichol drew a deep breath, sighed. "And now it's been thirteen years, and space is still littered with these . . . machines. That's the great and awful thing about space, isn't it? It preserves everything."

Quatre could only agree with him. It was a chilling image Nichol planted in his mind, the lost pilots whose motives weren't so different from their own. Still floating out there somewhere, just as they had been when they died. He and his comrades could easily have joined their ranks. Some of Nichol's comrades undoubtedly had. Their families never learning what happened to them. If their families made it through the war.

Would they ever be able to recover all of them? How long would it take?

"Well," Nichol barked, as if to banish the memories encroaching on them like ghosts, "I suppose you want to see the rest of the place."

He led Quatre through the exhibit, bypassing the corridors that led off to the museum's other collections—artifacts and video from the history of space exploration and colony development, from the earliest days of the Great Space Race, to the lunar mining operations, and the financial hurdles that were almost the ruin of mankind's dream of living in space. Until the oil-producing nations saved the project in what was perhaps their most surprising act of altruism.

His family had been among those saving pioneers. Quatre made a mental note to return to the museum at some later date, to read what was written, to watch the old videos of cultural heroes he had only heard of in his schooling, as distant and larger-than-life to him as the heroes of ancient legends.

Trowa saw him coming first.

He appeared as a small figure in coveralls high up on the shoulder of a posed Taurus, calling down to Quatre over the roar of heavy machinery and the hiss of soldering guns that he would be down in a second. As Trowa turned back to the innards of the Taurus's head, Quatre was transported momentarily back to the Maguanacs' old underground fortress, and the strange boy he had only just met and knew next to nothing about, yet instantly trusted. Speaking to no one, treating all those who milled around him like they didn't exist. Like nothing existed but himself and his gundam.

He remembered wondering if Trowa talked to his like Quatre talked to Sandrock.

Trowa spoke something into his mobile, and someone on the ground flipped a switch. The Taurus's single eye flashed to life. Satisfied, he signaled the success to the ground crew, the light went out again, and he stuffed the wires back into the suit.

"Mobile dolls," Nichol huffed at Quatre's back, crossing his arms tight over his chest. "That was the beginning of the end. As soon as you take human pilots out of the equation, whatever vestige of honor is left in war goes down the toilet."

"Funny. I seem to remember saying something along those lines to you, once upon a time."

As Trowa alighted on the museum floor, Nichol growled. "Hey, you think I liked taking a bunch of glorified computers with guns into combat?"

"Actually, yeah, I seem to remember you being quite enthusiastic about how many man-hours they were going to save. Of course, that was before I demonstrated their shortcomings so well for your superiors."

Whatever had passed between the two of them, Quatre had no idea. And he thought it best he not ask, by the way Nichol turned red down to his collar, muttering something between his teeth about how he didn't have to take this and was only here for the dress rehearsal of the opening ceremony anyway.

"Oddly enough," Trowa said when he had gone, gazing back up at the MD, poised to blast an invisible opponent to smithereens, "these suits are actually our best hope for future mobile suit applications. More than the Leos, more even than the Virgos, they were the only ones specifically designed to operate equally well in a zero-gravity environment and atmosphere."

Quatre followed his gaze, up to where two more Tauruses hung suspended, one midway through its transformation, the other fully in flight mode. Unlike the Space Leo, these models were in perfect condition—disturbing proof that even after the formation of the ESUN and the 196 ban, as well as the large-scale dismantling effort that followed, some suits had managed to survive unscathed.

"If that's what you want people to see, then why pose your suit with a gun?"

It wasn't intended as a joke, but Trowa smiled. "You sound like Relena."

What is the problem between you and Relena, Quatre wanted to say. He wasn't sure how it happened, how they had somehow become so closely acquainted and such bitter enemies all at the same time. "I'm serious, Trowa. I'm on your side—you know that, don't you?—but you have to admit that she has a point, and an exhibit like this doesn't exactly argue against it. When people come through here, they're going to see these things as instruments of death and destruction, not as the potential helpers of humanity that you want to recast them as."

"Come with me," Trowa said instead of the refutation that Quatre was expecting. "I want to show you something."

He took Quatre past more suits—some so old, as gundam pilots they had never had to face; a few donated by the Maguanacs and recovered from other private mercenary organizations like theirs that had long ago disbanded—past where the stage was being set up for tomorrow night's opening gala. And as they passed, Trowa called out a few words to those assembled: work crews like himself in coveralls, putting the final touches on the exhibit; museum staff; and a few of those dignitaries who, like Quatre, had shown up early to preview the exhibit before rehearsal. How different he seemed from that shy teenage boy who Quatre was convinced when they met had just been waiting for the right person to come along and put a quick end to his life. Even when they met three years ago, Trowa hadn't been as outgoing as this. Was this just another mask he wore for the occasion, a temporary burst of energy fueled by his pride for something he loved, something he believed in? Or had something truly changed?

And if it had, did Quatre have Dorothy to blame for that?

"So, where's Dorothy, if you don't mind my asking?" Quatre chose his words carefully, but even then Trowa could see right through them, if his quiet laugh was any indication. "I assumed she would be here, considering she _is _your primary backer."

"If that's your way of asking me if we're sharing a hotel room, Quatre, you don't have to jump through hoops to say it."

It hadn't been, but Quatre found himself biting his tongue. Trowa still knew him better than he knew himself.

"She's at the port, meeting with some of tomorrow night's big guests. At least, I think that's what she told me. To tell you the truth, I can't keep track of all the things she does, all the people she has to schmooze to make this project a success. I have enough to worry about right here."

Quatre glanced down at Trowa's left hand as he followed, happy to see he wasn't wearing a ring, even as he told himself there were many practical reasons not to wear a ring that did not preclude the _existence _of one.

"And here's the man without whom none of it would have been possible."

Trowa stopped beside a white-haired, now mostly bald old man, who blinked over his dark glasses at them. "Without my connections, you mean."

"Well." Trowa smiled. "That too."

"Howard? It's been so long, I didn't know I'd see you here!" Quatre stepped forward, eager to shake the man's hand. If nothing else, Quatre would have recognized him by his bright Hawaiian shirt, which he wore even now, after thirteen long years. Those thirteen years had been good to him, leading Quatre to wonder if Howard hadn't in fact been younger than he looked all along.

"I could say the same about you, kid!" Howard said, his voice a bit gruffer than Quatre remembered it, if no less sunny. "Thought you'd have enough on your mind without adding this trip down memory lane to your busy schedule."

Quatre winced. "I take it you've been watching the news."

"Kid, you'd have to be living under a rock for the last few months not to've heard about the shit storm you've landed yourself in. Er, if you'll pardon my French, there, Mr. Winner. But I do sympathize, though, I'll tell you what. These pundit goons have no idea what they're talking about. They didn't see the shit you kids saw. They didn't live it."

"I appreciate the sentiment." And Quatre did, even if a part of him knew he deserved the—as Howard put it—shit storm. It was, after all, one of his own making.

He just wished a few more media personalities saw it the same way.

"So," said Howard. "I suppose you two wanna see it."

Quatre glanced at Trowa. "See what?"

"Our pièce de résistance," Trowa said. "Just a little surprise we put in at the end of the exhibit. We have to keep it under wraps until opening night. Museum staff has been sworn to secrecy. If the media got wind of it—well, you wanna talk about a publicity shit storm."

That still told Quatre less than nothing about what that "surprise" was. Had his old friend already built a working prototype of a new mobile suit? Quatre wouldn't put it past him, but this didn't seem like the appropriate place to unveil it. Not while the ESUN was still debating the feasibility of producing mobile suits again, even if for theoretically peaceful purposes.

"It's been the work of several long, frustrating years getting this thing out of the ground—hell, just negotiating the rights to remove it has been a nightmare. For that alone, I owe Dorothy more than I can ever repay her.

"And you, too, for that matter, Howard," Trowa called after the old man, who was busy unlocking the partition that blocked the chamber beyond from view. "If it weren't for your equipment and your crew, it would still be at the bottom of a lake."

"Nah. It's the least I can do, Barton. Just so long as you don't ask me to marry you, too, I'd say we're good."

So saying, Howard flipped the switch, and flood lights illuminated the room's central exhibit in a queer, bluish haze, as if they were looking at the thing underwater.

It was like the monster of a Gothic horror, enormous and misshapen. Grotesque. All that was left was a burnt husk of a massive corpse and a pile of debris, but Quatre recognized it instantly. From what remained of its face, the nub of a wing like it had been torn from a fallen angel, burning up in the atmosphere—

And the open cockpit, its hatch and one of its walls long blasted away, revealing a blackened chair spilling stuffing, controls he knew intimately well and could never forget the feel of in his hands as long as he lived.

"It was still there," Trowa said, voice hushed as if on hallowed ground. "Right where Heero abandoned it. I guess he thought it was too far past anyone's ability to restore it. And he was right about that. But part of me likes to think he knew we would need it someday."

Howard nodded. "I wouldn't put it past him."

"I can't believe it," Quatre breathed. "After all this time. Zero."

It was more a salutation than anything. A recognition of a being more god than machine in humanity's collective consciousness—even more so in his own. It was the one ghost of his past that haunted him more than any other. It deserved to have its presence acknowledged aloud, least of all by the one who had brought it to life. If only in a previous incarnation.

"Still beautiful, ain't it," Howard said, "even in this condition."

And Quatre had to agree, even if the man had misunderstood the reason for his awe.

"It deserves to be here," Trowa said. "There's no better way to mark the beginning of a new era than this, the end of the old one."


	3. Chapter 3

"So, you're not going to tell me what this big surprise is?"

Quatre smiled to his reflection in the mirror in lieu of his secretary, pausing in the middle of tying his tie. "If I told you, it wouldn't be a surprise anymore, would it? It's not that I don't trust you, of course, but I promised Trowa I'd keep mum until the big reveal. I've said too much as it is. You'll hear about it all soon enough."

"I'll be glued to the television, sir."

If Quatre's suspicions were correct, the whole Earth Sphere would be abuzz with news of Trowa's so-called pièce de résistance, and not entirely in a positive way. Trowa was taking a bat to a hornet's nest on this one, yet Quatre still couldn't decide whether he agreed with the decision. It all depended on the timing. Unveiling a gundam was bound to open old wounds for colonists and earthlings alike. It might not be the best image to display to politicians and businessmen still on the fence about funding Trowa's pet project.

But would a collection chronicling the history of mobile suit warfare be complete without at least one of them?

"Anything else?"

She tried to disguise it, but he could hear a trace of disappointment in his secretary's voice. "Yes, actually. I didn't want it to ruin your evening, but Mr. Kurama thought it was too important not to mention. Your office received another death threat, sir."

Quatre sighed. This was to be expected, he supposed. No different from when he was an anonymous gundam pilot. Only then it had required some extensive digging before one discovered his real name and identity. "Thank you for letting me know," he said. "But I assure you, I'm not worried. Like I said before, if someone really wanted to kill me, they wouldn't warn me about it before hand."

"I feel the same way, sir, and that's what I told Mr. Kurama your reaction would be," said his secretary. "But he thinks this one is too serious to ignore. Whoever the sender is, he's made threats before."

"And has acted on none of them. Now, of course I understand Rashid's concern. I understood why he didn't want me taking this trip with so little security, either. But that's why I agreed to hire whichever driver he recommended. I believe that's called compromise."

"I agree with you completely, sir."

_But. _He could feel it, unspoken, lurking behind her words. "For what it's worth," Quatre said, "security at the event will be impeccable. Director Une will be there, along with a significant Preventer presence, and I can guarantee she of all people will make sure there are redundant checkpoints in place at all entrances and exits—including the restrooms. But if it helps, you can tell Rashid he's first on my speed dial in the unlikely event of a terror attack or natural disaster."

Tie tied, he smoothed down the gentle waves of his hair that kept threatening to make trouble. Blond again, the last bits of brown washed out, he looked less his father and more the "rock star" on the cover of _Today. _Thank God the new issue would be hitting stands in a couple days.

Bring on the criticism, he thought to his reflection. Tonight, just try and see if you can dampen my mood.

He shrugged on his tuxedo jacket, tugging it out straight, and finally turned to face his secretary on the video screen. "Well. How do I look?"

"Like your old self, sir. I think I speak for the rest of your staff here when I wish you the best of luck tonight."

-o-

Duo was right. Seven speakers wasmore than enough for the museum's opening night gala.

Personally, Quatre found Dorothy's story detailing the journey to the exhibit opening to be refreshingly entertaining—she did, after all, have a remarkable talent for rousing a crowd—and the speeches given by Une and Gwinter Septem, son of the late general of the Alliance Space Force, were certainly important. Quatre's brief piece was received with enthusiasm, though he suspected part of that was the eagerness of the members of the press among the crowd to catch any misstep on his part on record.

But by the time the Chief Administrator of the colony took the podium to declare the exhibit open, the guests were already exhibiting their own signs of restlessness. Quatre wondered if, in an emergency, they would have moved to the exits as quickly as they took off for the refreshments tables.

It didn't surprise him that Trowa had planned not to speak, even though the exhibit had been his brainchild from planning to execution. His character hadn't changed _that_ much, and Dorothy more or less addressed every point that needed to be addressed as far as their bid to restart mobile suit production was concerned—in more diplomatic ways than even Trowa, for all his carefully chosen turns of phrase, would have been able to frame it.

He was more the type to contribute behind the scenes, where he could lose himself in the inner workings of a pneumatic joint or cockpit computer rather than a politician's mind. And the hard work paid off. Colony officials marveled at the Tragos and Aries that once guarded the grand entrance at the Romefeller palace outside Bremen. Tallgeese gathered its own sizable draw. Easily the tallest mobile suit there, the predecessor of the gundams, it brought an element of long-lost nobility to an otherwise clinical collection of war machines.

Trowa had set up one of the Maguanac suits to allow visitors a more hands-on experience. It might have been designed to inspire new interest in mobile suits in school children, but tonight grown men and women in tuxes and gowns lined up for a chance to sit at the controls, and experience for themselves what Quatre and his comrades had become all too accustomed to: being strapped into a tight box of recycled air with your only access to the outside world a wrap-around screen, and all the power of a 7.5-ton mobile suit at your fingertips.

Only without the enemy's weapon staring you in the face. Without the rumble of engines at your back, or the vibration of every heavy footstep jolting up through your bones. Surely there was something Quatre should have found worrisome in the thrilled laughter that spilled from the lips of the dignitaries who emerged from that cockpit, but tonight he was having a hard time nailing it down. The mood was optimistic, it was far removed from the reality of a war more than a decade distant, and it was infectious.

He wondered if the general public would have the same reaction.

For now, though, Trowa had much to smile about when he sought Quatre out of the crowd.

Swooping in like a savior, he managed to pull Quatre away from a business acquaintance and his wife, granting him some much-needed, if temporary, relief from the flashing cameras of the media in attendance.

"Wow," was all Quatre could say at first when they were out of earshot. "You sure clean up nice."

He'd seen Trowa in full formals before, but never did he glow in them quite like this. After all, Quatre supposed, this event was a little like celebrating the birth of his own child. He couldn't help wondering if Trowa would look as content as this on his own wedding day, as hard as he tried to banish the thought.

Trowa spread his hands, a flute of champagne in each one, as if to say, I know, I can't believe how good I turned out myself. "You like the white jacket?" He handed one of the glasses to Quatre.

"You look like you just came from an espionage movie. Which, I guess, is just another day in the life of Trowa Barton. Dorothy's doing, I take it?"

"Certainly wasn't mine. I keep worrying I'm going to get something on it."

In that case, Quatre hated to break it to him, but he wouldn't be a friend if he didn't point out the pale little spot on the front of his jacket. Trowa looked around guiltily as he tried to wipe it away without being noticed, and Quatre stifled a laugh. He leaned in to further shield his friend from prying eyes. "Don't worry. I'm sure they've got club soda at the open bar. Next opportunity you get to sneak off to the little boys' room. . . ."

"Think I can get there without Dorothy noticing?"

"I'll cover your six, cause a distraction if I see her coming. She won't suspect a thing."

"Better not. If this shows up on the news, she'll kill me personally."

"It's hardly noticeable."

"_You_ noticed it fast enough." There was probably something ironic, Quatre supposed, about a spot on a jacket being a former gundam pilot's biggest concern, but Trowa always had been a bit vain about the facade he showed to others. Perhaps accepting it was a futile battle, he surrendered with a sigh, and returned his attentions to Quatre. "Man, it's good to see you again."

"Three days we've been here, and you're just telling me that now?"

"What can I say? I've been a little sidetracked." He gestured around the museum floor.

"Yeah, I gathered that much." Quatre had been watching him out of the corner of his eye all evening—watching and eavesdropping whenever he could as Trowa explained various exhibits to the attendees with a sort of dreamy cadence to his words more at home in an art gallery than a museum of science and technology. "It's awe-inspiring, Trowa, truly, what you've put together here. Your passion for these machines—not as weapons, but as marvels of human ingenuity, both tragic and beautiful at the same time—it really shows through. Of course, I wouldn't have expected anything less from you."

"Anal retentiveness. Can't call yourself a gundam pilot without it."

"I can drink to that."

It had been too long, Quatre agreed as they shared a knowing grin. Now that they were here like this, it seemed those years had passed all too quickly. How could he just let them go without a fight? Sure, they had both been busy with their own lives, but was that really a legitimate excuse for his inaction when he thought of all they had missed? What was ever so important that he couldn't be bothered simply to call?

"I see you're not wearing your ring."

Trowa looked down at his hand as if just noticing. Of course the decision was better thought out than that; it was too much for Quatre to hope he might have lost it somewhere in one of these mobile suits. "Now wouldn't be the right time to advertise our union. It would sound too convenient. I don't want anyone to think I'm only marrying Dorothy for her money or power."

"Of course that's not what you're doing." Trowa may have been tactical to a fault sometimes, as was Dorothy, but Quatre just didn't see it in either of them to marry for convenience alone. Still, he noticed Trowa didn't answer right away. "Is it?"

Trowa blinked. "If that was all I was after all this time, I could have just saved myself the trouble and married you."

Quatre nearly choked on his champagne. Was this Trowa's idea of a joke or was he baiting him? History was no help in that matter. Whichever it was meant as, Trowa should have known better. Unless he really was that oblivious to Quatre's feelings these past few days—

"Wonderful! Just the people I wanted to see, and you've already found each other. Makes my job _so_ much easier."

Was it just Quatre's imagination, or did Trowa's ease disappear like a switch had been flipped when he heard Dorothy's voice? Oh, right. The stain.

"Don't you look cozy over here by yourselves," she purred, slipping one arm around Trowa's waist and gracefully receiving the requisite kiss on the cheek. "If I didn't know you two better, I would have thought you were flirting like a couple of old schoolmates."

Quatre could feel his face grow hot. He hadn't given it an ounce of thought. Was that how they appeared to everyone?

Trowa was a little more resolute in ignoring the comment. Instead, he turned to Dorothy's companion. "Madam Director—or should I say, Lady Une. Red certainly suits you."

"Charming, Mr. Barton, as usual. And, might I say, congratulations on the success of your show."

In a draping blood-red dress that seemed to only enhance the power of her position, the former colonel of OZ was a presence in the museum hall impossible to ignore. Not to be so quickly outdone, Dorothy glared at Quatre.

It was another second of staring before he got the message. "Dorothy! Don't you look, er, stunning this evening."

"Why, thank you, Quatre," she said sweetly enough, but her sharp look warned him he was this close to overdoing it. "How kind of you to notice."

As usual, Dorothy did not let her status or her brains get in the way of high fashion. Her strapless black gown's neckline was borderline scandalous, the white lapels stretched across her breasts and black lace gloves that extended well beyond her elbows doing little to make the cut look stately. Yet Dorothy Catalonia managed to wear the dress and its plunging neckline like a business suit at a meeting with the board of directors.

Perhaps the analogy wasn't so far off. After all, she was here to rub elbows with important prospective investors. She certainly didn't need to use her looks to get her way—she had plenty of techniques in her repertoire without lowering herself to that—but as far as she seemed concerned, it never hurt.

"While you two were eluding your mingling duties," she scolded the men, "_I've _been in negotiations with a representative of the lunar Port Authority about securing development space satellite-side. That is, of course, if Relena doesn't manage to convince the ESUN that our mobile suits violate the treaty first. Ah, a woman's work is never done!"

"That's great news," Trowa said. "Want me to talk to him?"

"_Her, _actually. And, no, there'll be ample time for that later once we gain ourselves a little more high-profile support. I came over here to tell you boys it's time we unveiled our little surprise."

_Our _little surprise? The wording didn't escape Quatre, like he had somehow become enmeshed in a conspiracy of her and Trowa's making. Dorothy plucked their mostly empty glasses from their hands and dropped them on the tray of the next server to walk by. Quatre had no choice but to follow her toward the hall that housed Zero's remains, Trowa shooting him a look that promised they would talk more later.

"Duo and Relena have agreed to meet us at the hall entrance," Dorothy was saying, "so if we can just get our hands on Wufei— Where _has _Mr. Chang been hiding all this time, anyway, Madam Director?"

"Agent Chang had to cancel unexpectedly," Une said. "We caught a break in an ongoing investigation—too important to pull him away from."

"More important than having four of the gundam pilots together again in one place?" Dorothy huffed. As if Wufei's absence were a personal slight.

Trowa smiled. "We know where Wufei's true priorities lie."

"Oh, I'm sure he sends his apologies. I guess we'll just have to make this work without him. And look, they've already gathered a crowd for us."

A small podium had been set up at the hall entrance, where Relena and Duo were indeed already waiting along with Howard—true to character, in rumpled tux. As the others joined them, cameras flashed and reporters pressed in closer. Nearby conversations faded to anticipatory silence at the sight of the former gundam pilots together in public for the first time. Even if there were just three of them.

"Ladies and gentlemen, if I may have your attention, please," Dorothy addressed the hall. "We'd like to take this moment to thank all of you for coming to the opening of Colony C-421's Museum of Aerospace Technology and History's newest exhibit. However, now that you've had a chance to see the various mobile suits in the collection, I'm sure you will all agree that one important piece is still missing. You didn't come here just to see Leos and mobile dolls, did you? No, of course not. Leos, while undeniably the backbone of the war machine in the last few decades of the past century, are still a dime a dozen. You came to see something a bit rarer—something _extraordinary._ _You _came to see a _gundam._"

She allowed a pause long enough for the full weight of the word to sink in. By the looks on some of the faces, not everyone had come here expecting that particular expectation to be met.

Dorothy beamed, knowing she had them all eating out of the palm of her hand. "Ladies and gentlemen," she said, with a triumphant sweep of her arm, "it is with great pleasure that I give you the first, and last, gundam—Wing Zero!"

On her cue, the lights came up in the dark hall behind them, illuminating the chamber's centerpiece with that same eerie blue light that had moved Quatre so unexpectedly the afternoon before. The effect was as though one moment they had been facing a wall of physical darkness, and the next, a titan named Zero was spontaneously born into being.

And Quatre was accustomed to the sight of a gundam. Not so the gala's attendees, who might at most have stood on the same grounds as a Leo or Aries, but never seen this now iconic image on anything closer than the television news. Instead of the applause her earlier speech had earned, an awed hush now followed Dorothy's words. A few at a time the crowd trickled in, like pilgrims entering a holy place.

Maybe that analogy was stretching it a bit, but there was something to be said for the amount of respect both dignitaries and journalists alike appeared to share for Wing Zero—either for the machine's role in ending the Second Eve War, or for the pilot, who, as far as they knew, might still be hidden in thir company or might have given his life to end the Barton Foundation's short-lived coup.

The media wanted photographs of the key players of the Eve Wars with the gundam. It was a natural backdrop for their questions, and so a natural place for the seven to answer them.

"Mr. Barton, Mr. Maxwell. You knew the pilot of Wing Zero. Can't you tell us anything about him? How would you describe his character? Would he have wanted his suit to be put on display like this?"

"Is it true the it's been at the bottom of Lake Geneva these past twelve years? How did you locate the gundam, Mr. Howard? What was it like for your crew hauling that thing to the surface?"

"Director Une, what is the Preventers' official stance on the colony museum housing this machine? Even in its current state, the gundanium alloy must still be viable. In your opinion, does that violate the 196 treaty?"

"Miss Catalonia, your group has expanded its operations considerably over the past few years, and now you want to single-handedly bring back mobile suit production for use in outer space. How do you respond to allegations put forth by some in the media that the Catalonia Group is the next Barton Foundation?"

"Please, gentlemen, I don't know how these rumors ever got started, but I find the comparison between myself and Dekim Barton to be utterly without merit. For one, if and when I decide to install my own global totalitarian regime, I certainly won't dress my minions in magenta."

Cue laughter. It even earned a slight, wry snicker from Relena.

"Foreign Minister Darlian, how does it feel to be reunited with the suit that very nearly ended your life?"

"Well, for one, it didn't," Relena said. "I am very much alive, and, in fact, I believe I have the pilot of that gundam to thank for that. Without his efforts—and the efforts of all the gundam pilots—the Earth Sphere might look very different from the way it does today. Because of their noble example," she said as she exchanged glances with Quatre and Trowa, "because they would not give up the fight for peace even when the odds were stacked so overwhelmingly against them, the people of Earth would not allow a dictatorship by the Barton Foundation. If there's anything we can still learn from the gundams, it's that peace is something we, as a people, must earn. Every day is a constant battle to maintain it."

Her answer set off a storm of new questions, but, as if he had anticipated their direction, Trowa was quick to fend them off.

"I think what Foreign Minister Darlian is trying to say," he said, his voice understated yet strong enough to rise above the hubbub, "is that the gundams have always been at their most powerful not as weapons of war but as symbols. Symbols of dissent, symbols of terror, yes, oftentimes, but also symbols of freedom from the forces of oppression. We gundam pilots have no wish to be hailed as heroes. —Or villains, for that matter. We are only human."

That earned him some murmurs from the crowd. It was a loaded statement if Quatre ever heard one, coming from Trowa. But just like his humor, the various layers of meaning behind it were bound to be mostly lost on their audience.

"Miss Darlian, are you saying you now support the Catalonia Group's bid to restart mobile suit production?"

Dorothy turned to her with an expectant smile.

But Relena's response was as diplomatic as always. "I cannot say at this point whether I support it or not. Dorothy and Mr. Barton have submitted plans for this new generation of suits to me, and I will submit my final recommendation—whatever that may be—to the Earth Sphere Unified Nation when I am done reviewing them.

"What I can tell you is that a prototype is already in use in the Martian terraforming project, and so far it has enjoyed wide success. However, I would urge people to remember that Mars is a very isolated colony, and circumstances there are far different from what they are on Earth. Above all, we have an obligation to future generations not to create tools that have even the _potential _to wipe out life on Earth, as we came so close to doing thirteen years ago. If that means foregoing the use of mobile suits even for peaceful, constructive purposes, then I will stand by that position."

"And you, Mr. Winner? Do you share the Foreign Minister's trepidations?"

He blinked. _That_, at least, was a straightforward question. "Of course I share them. As a former gundam pilot myself, few know better than I do the awful price suffered for the proliferation of weaponized mobile suits. I lost a father to that battle, a sister, and countless comrades whose debt to mankind can never be repaid."

"Does this mean you will be giving a negative response to the Catalonia Group's request of material support?"

Material support? That was news to Quatre. Though he expected Trowa would approach him eventually about using the Winner resource satellites, he hadn't thought the first time he heard about it would be through a television reporter.

When he glanced over, Trowa was impassive, but Dorothy smiled back at him with confidence. Of course she would. She'd worked alongside Quatre long enough to know his official response before he did himself.

"On the contrary," he said. "I think I can say, for the record, that I whole-heartedly support Mr. Barton and Miss Catalonia's proposal. We in L4 have enjoyed the benefits of a peaceful application of mobile suits for decades, without incident, and we believe the Earth Sphere is ready for the next stage in their evolution.

"Mankind is expanding its presence in space once again, and the colonies are struggling to keep up with the demand for room and resources. If ever there was a time we needed mobile suits, it's now. Not as instruments of destruction, but as instruments of _con_struction_._ Builders. Excavators. So long as the Catalonia Group can guarantee this new generation of suits can never be used for military purposes, the Winner family's resources, including our supplies of neo-titanium alloy, are at their disposal."

_And_, let the shit storm begin.

A volley of questioning aimed straight at him erupted from the reporters, and he caught more than a few related to the campaign back in his home cluster. But tonight was about his friends, Trowa and Dorothy, and a new lease on the dream of mobile suit technology. Poll numbers and opponents' latest soundbites and attacks on his moral character could wait.

Besides, Trowa's hand on his shoulder, squeezing gently in gratitude and solidarity, would create enough chatter as it was without any words at all.

-o-

"I can't thank you enough, Quatre," he said when they had a moment to be alone and out of the limelight, the three gundam pilots. "This wasn't how I wanted to ask you, but that little speech you gave out there in support of our project . . . Well, as I'm often reminded these days, that's why I'm an engineer and not a politician."

"It was the least I could do," Quatre assured him. "They might crucify me for it in the press back home, but it's the truth. How can we say we've learned _any_ lesson from mobile suit warfare if we just toss away the technology wholesale?"

"Mm," Duo interjected, before swallowing the cocktail shrimp. "Speaking of lessons learned, how exactly do you plan to keep these new suits of yours from being weaponized?"

Trowa smiled. "That's where you two come in. If you don't mind, I'd like both of you to participate in the design phase. Quatre, you know more about AI programming than I do. Dorothy thought maybe you'd have some ideas about how to ensure the new suits can't easily be turned against human beings."

Because of the Zero System, Quatre thought, guessing the path of Dorothy's reasoning. If that same technology could be used as a safety measure. . . .

Duo brightened. "So this isn't just some political move for her."

"I know 'gearhead' isn't the first word to come to mind when you meet Dorothy," said Trowa. Duo looked like he was struggling not to supply the word Trowa might have been looking for. "But it isn't _all _about speed and power with her. She does hope to be president of the Unified Nation someday."

"You're kidding. And what will that make you, huh, Trowa? The First Dude?"

"Funny." Trowa's eyes narrowed. "And am I to understand, Duo, that you've left the mother of your future child to fend for herself in that political jungle out there, so you could escape in here with what you snatched from the buffet?"

"Hey, they put the food out for a reason. Someone has to eat it. Besides, rubbing elbows with fat-cat celebs and big wigs? This is a dream come true for Hil. I'm not gonna ruin it for her and drag her _away _from the action. It's the politicians I'd feel sorry for if I was you. They came here expecting a party, not an inquisition."

Watching his two old comrades trading jab for jab, Quatre covered a laugh. Like old times, sitting around some lobby without having to worry someone might mistake them for someone important.

"All this monkey-suit business ain't really my style anyway," Duo said with a sigh, folding the remainder of a crab cake into a cocktail napkin and dusting crumbs from his jacket. "But I put up with it because we're brothers, the three of us. And," he said more specifically to Trowa, "brothers support each other in whatever way I can."

"Mr. Barton?" a young woman interrupted with an apologetic look. In a navy suit rather than formal attire, she was clearly working the gala rather than enjoying it as a guest. "Sir, there's a reporter here from _The Daily Recap_. He was wondering if you have time to spare for an interview."

"I'll be right there." But the way Trowa's shoulders seemed to slump in a silent sigh did not escape Quatre. He knew others—the gundam pilots included—tended to view him as a man of few emotions, but to Quatre, who was used to it, the most subtle sigh from Trowa was an elaborate dramatic gesture.

He said to them when the young woman had walked away, "We can talk more about this later. Just promise me you'll think about my proposal before you make a decision.

"Both of you," he said while he stared at Quatre.

Duo stretched in his chair when the other had gone, folding his arms behind his back. "Man, I don't know, Quatre. Working on mobile suits again, together as a team. . . . Not to say it wouldn't come back to me, but there are some axes that are just better off staying buried. Know what I mean?"

Quatre smiled at his mix of metaphors. "Then what was all that just now about brothers supporting one another?"

Duo winced. "Hey, I'm not saying I won't consider it. But that's a part of my life I left behind a long time ago. I'm not like Trowa. Or you, even. I've spent the last decade just trying to be normal. A wife and a steady job and a kid on the way—at least one. I'm not sure I'd _want_ to go back. The only reason I'm even here tonight is because—"

Quatre nodded. "Because it means a lot to Trowa."

It meant a lot for the history books, too, their reunion at this exhibit opening, but Quatre was no longer in a mood to wax poetical. "What I can't figure out is if this is Trowa's way of atoning for the past," he said, "or reliving it. Until the end of the war, mobile suits were pretty much all he knew."

"Maybe he feels like he really can't move on," said Duo.

Maybe. Sure, maybe that was it.

"I keep thinking back to when he agreed to dispose of Heavyarms. He didn't hesitate, like he felt no connection to his gundam whatsoever that was worth holding on to. As if he were only too eager to destroy that part of him responsible for participating in the war."

"In a way he has, though, don't you think? Maybe building mobile suits for peacetime _is_ his way of starting over. I'm not the only one who feels that way, either. I mean, if you listen to Hilde."

Still, Quatre wasn't entirely convinced it was so easy.

"Can I be frank with you, Duo?" he said, lowering his voice. Even in their private corner of the museum, he didn't want anyone to overhear and take what he said the wrong way. "No one else would understand like you would. Well, maybe Wufei, but I don't think he would just listen without trying to make it more complicated."

Duo sobered and leaned forward in his chair. "Sure, Quatre. You know I wouldn't judge."

"It's just . . . Sometimes I miss Sandrock, Duo. I really do. He was more than a machine to me. Much more than a weapon. He was my first true confidante—as twisted as that sounds—the first thing in my life that wasn't telling me what to do or not to do, but just . . . guiding me toward a sense of righteousness within I had never felt the presence of before."

"I get it," Duo said. "He was your partner. I felt the same way about Deathscythe."

Quatre smiled to himself. He wanted to say how lately he'd longed to have that guiding presence back, something to show him what to do, how to go about this business of leading a colony, how to shoulder these new responsibilities. In many ways, fighting a war had been easier. Not necessarily right, but simpler. Something about being behind the cockpit hatch that threw all the problems of the world into sharper relief.

He forced a laugh to banish those memories. "Listen to us. Talking about them like they were alive."

"Well, they were to us," Duo said. "Like Relena said, the gundams were a symbol for so many people. Just more so for us because they were a part of us. And maybe because at the time, they were all we had in the world."

-o-

Quatre sighed and let gravity do its work. The backseat of a town car never felt so good as it did right now, at—he checked the time—two thirty-one in the morning.

Sakamoto turned at the noise. "Busy night, Mr. Winner."

The bow tie came off with two quick tugs, and finally Quatre felt like he could breathe again. "You have no idea. Sorry to keep you up this late, Mr. Sakamoto."

The man smiled. "Not at all. It's my duty, Mr. Winner. I sleep when you sleep. Besides, I've been watching CNN's coverage of the gala event." He gestured to the screen mounted in the dash. "Riveting entertainment."

Even now, recycled footage from earlier in the evening was playing, though Sakamoto had the courtesy to put it on mute.

As for Quatre, he just wanted to put the night behind him. It went as well as could be expected—even exceeded his expectations, to be honest—but it was a lot to digest. Not for the first time did he wish he could cut and copy the evening's proceedings from his mind, and leave it refreshed and ready for the next day.

"Well, if I'm lucky," he said more to himself than his driver, leaning his head back and resting his tired eyes, "I can still get about three hours of sleep before I have to start getting ready for the fund-raising event tomorrow—" He groaned. "God, _why_ did I think I could schedule them so close together?"

Sakamoto smiled to himself.

"I hope you don't mind me saying this, Mr. Winner, but I believe your father would have been very proud of you if he could have seen you tonight."

That made Quatre crack an eyelid and pay attention. "What makes you say that? I've just committed his forefathers' resources to mobile suit production. He would have disowned me. Again."

Sakamoto laughed. "You would think so, wouldn't you? But he was also a man who stood up for what he believed in, and he believed strongly in innovation. Innovation for the good of mankind. He was an altruist, pure and simple. In that way, it's easy to see you're your father's son."

Quatre smirked. If he didn't hear those words again, it would be all too soon. Yet, somehow, the bitterness he once felt being compared to that man was strangely absent, and in its place he felt a warmth in the pit of his stomach. Of course, maybe it was just that he was physically and mentally exhausted, or that some residual memory from his childhood of the man who was telling him this made the words feel more trustworthy than they might otherwise.

"Sounds like you knew him," he told Sakamoto, "better than I did."


	4. Chapter 4

This was a disaster. Three hours of sleep and a speech to give in the colony this morning, and the last thing Quatre needed plaguing his mind was the front page of a tabloid suggesting he and Trowa were in bed together.

"It's a figure of speech." Trowa sighed like he couldn't believe he was even having this conversation, let alone at this hour. "What did you think they were going to say about a couple of ex-gundam pilots working together again?"

It was a good thing they were talking by phone, because with this little sleep, Quatre felt like he could have throttled Trowa if he were sitting here in person. "Thank you, but I figured that much out on my own. But the idea they plant in the reader's head— Did you even see the photo on the front page?"

Trowa blinked at his own screen as Quatre held up the paper. He shrugged. "So we look chummy."

"We look more than chummy." Caught in a laugh, standing too close, much too close for two people who were supposed to be just friends, what they looked like was less a couple of conspirators and more a pair of newlyweds off in their own world. So what if they'd only been joking about a spot on Trowa's white jacket? It hadn't shown up in pictures after all, so what evidence did they have but their word?

Who wouldn't read that headline and see that photo and jump to the obvious conclusion? And how could Quatre honestly deny that, at the moment the picture was taken, nothing in the world had existed for him except Trowa's smile?

Quatre groaned. He rubbed his fingers over his temples, hiding behind his hands. "I can't wait to see what the pundits are going to extrapolate from this. —God, Trowa, what is Dorothy going to think when she sees it? Is she listening right now?"

"Calm down, Quatre. No, she's not listening. She's in the shower."

Trowa glanced briefly over his shoulder anyway, just to make sure. It only served as yet another reminder Quatre could have done without that he and Dorothy were officially a couple. Sharing hotel rooms, sharing hotel beds and showers. Probably still awake celebrating their success at four in the morning while Quatre was passed out cold from exhaustion. And here he was getting worked up over a picture in a newspaper. It was enough to shame him into taking a step back from his worry if nothing else did.

He glanced at the television news, turned to mute when he made this call to Trowa. Colony News Network had been giving their run-down of the previous night's events at regular intervals all morning, but so far no mention of the damning photograph. Maybe he _was_ making a mountain out of mole hill on this one.

As if reading his thoughts:

"Look. It's just a photograph. You and I know what happened. Is this really something you should be getting worked up about, Quatre? Don't you have that fund-raiser later this morning—"

"It's more of an 'awareness rally.' "

"Alright, awareness rally. Whatever. In any event, I really don't think paranoid is the image you want to present to your audience. Are you worried people are going to see this photo and jump to conclusions about the two of us being in cahoots? Or." Trowa narrowed his eyes. "Is this even about the photograph at all?"

It wasn't Quatre's intent to hesitate. But he did. That gave Trowa all the answer he needed.

What little patience he had managed to muster for Quatre this early in the morning evaporated. "I thought we were past this. I thought my showing up here with Dorothy, and your being okay with it, meant this was over and done—"

"When did I ever say I was alright with it?"

"Then you aren't?" That was news to Trowa, though Quatre didn't know why it should have been. But his old friend shook his head. "God, Quatre, you have horrible timing. You could have— No. No, you had your chance, and you blew it. I'm not going to discuss this with you while we both have campaigns to run here."

"And are you fine with what the press will say about you? Are you ready for all the wild speculation they're going to make about you because of a picture like this? Because they will. That's what they do, and you have no idea what it's like to be their target. You run around safely behind all your different personas, or Dorothy's little bubble of protection, and you have no idea what it is to actually try and _be _someone, Trowa! Living under a microscope, forced to justify the most minute decisions you make—"

"I'm ready enough. I _welcome_ criticism, if it's legitimate. But I also know enough not to let some petty rumors about my sex life get in the way of realizing my goals."

Unlike one of us, Quatre heard beneath his words. "Well, that's why you're an engineer and not a politician, like you said. If you'd been born a Winner, maybe you would understand me a little better."

As soon as the words were out of Quatre's mouth, he wanted to snatch them back. After all they'd been through as teenagers, he should know better than to revert to the behavior of a spoiled child. As if he had learned nothing from that night so many years ago, after he swore he would never make the same mistake again. He had no right to speak to Trowa, of all people, that way.

He could see it on Trowa's face as well, that he was thinking the same thing. A subtle tightening in his jaw, a silent hurt in his eyes. He was going to hang up on Quatre, and Quatre wouldn't be able to say he blamed him.

"Wait," he said before the connection could be cut. "That wasn't what I meant to say." He winced at himself. Even that didn't come out the way he wanted. Why was it so hard for him these days to just say he was sorry? "Can we— Is there a chance we could talk this over somewhere? In person, not over the phone."

It looked like Trowa was having a hard time not just responding in the negative outright, but he forced himself to say: "What were you thinking?"

"Dinner. Tonight. Somewhere we can actually talk, without having to worry about our words being taken out of context."

Trowa sighed. The amount of time it was taking him to respond, Quatre was certain he had already blown it. Again.

"Fine," Trowa said after a moment. "I'll talk to Dorothy, see if we can get a reservation for the three of us—"

"No Dorothy. This doesn't concern her, Trowa. It needs to be just the two of us. _I _need it to be just the two of us."

There was more than enough for the two of them alone to handle, and Dorothy was the last person Quatre wanted in on that conversation. As much as he respected her as a colleague, as much as he considered her a good friend, he was having a hard time not casting her as the villain in this dialogue. What he feared most was that her presence there would only make it worse, and increase his chances of making a fool of himself in front of both of them.

But so far into their stay in the colony, it looked like she and Trowa were going to be a package deal. "You can tell her Duo will be there, too," Quatre tried, "if that would make you feel better. Guys' night out, or something."

"You want me to lie to her now?"

No, that wasn't what Quatre wanted. But he couldn't bring himself to see a problem with the deception either. Not in this case. "Why don't you just think about it. I'll call you back this afternoon, after the event."

Then Quatre cut the transmission himself, before Trowa had a chance to blow him off completely. That he wasn't sure he would be able to handle. Not this morning. Not today.

-o-

The rain was scheduled to return later that evening, but in the colony there was not a cloud in the sky. If "sky" was indeed the proper word.

But on street level, one could almost imagine a blue ceiling of heaven over the city, without the vague anxiety about slipping out of the pull of gravity that still sometimes gripped him, born and raised in the colonies as he was, upon that first glimpse of a boundless Earth vista after touchdown.

"Sure is good weather for an outdoor event," Sakamoto said. "Wouldn't you agree, Mr. Winner?"

"You could say that again." There were shadows under the feet of those out enjoying the daylight, shades hiding their eyes instead of umbrellas. The bright light sure put his driver in a good mood, and Quatre couldn't deny that he in turn was warmed by it, the dark clouds he had been under earlier that morning being gently pushed away. "We should have a fairly decent turnout thanks to this. I'll have to send the colony administrators a little something to show my gratitude."

"Sir, might I suggest an assortment of coffees grown and roasted on L4. In my experience, you can never go wrong with coffee or local produce."

Quatre chuckled. He couldn't question wisdom like that. "Then it's decided. I'll make the call when I return to my room."

And stop calling me "sir," he almost said, but stopped himself short. It wasn't his place to tell a man who had been so loyal to his family what to or not to say, even if it did make him feel somewhat displaced to be addressed in the same way Sakamoto had once addressed his father. If anything, it was Rashid who deserved his gratitude—and his heartfelt apology—for finding the man and reuniting them after more than two decades.

He wondered, if only vaguely, why Sakamoto had ever left his father's service, now that he had seen more than just a glimpse into the man's character. He had been kind to Quatre once, that much he was slowly remembering from when he was very young, in the way a distant uncle tries to ensure he will be remembered kindly, with favorite candies and an active interest in the childhood obsessions of little boys. If only Quatre could remember what Sakamoto the man had been like at that time, he thought, then maybe he could make him feel as at home as he did for Quatre.

"I don't expect I'll be getting out of there until well after three," Quatre told him when they arrived at the city park where the event would be held. "You shouldn't have to hang around the car so long. Why don't you go and see the sights. You're welcome to come and watch the presentation, if you're interested in that sort of thing, but I can't guarantee it'll be all that exciting. You should at least be able to treat yourself to a nice lunch in the meantime—"

"Now, Mr. Winner, I appreciate your concern for me," Sakamoto tried to demure, just as Quatre had anticipated, "but I really couldn't—"

"I insist. It's the very least you deserve, after waiting up for me all last night. You should have a chance to enjoy yourself when you're not on the clock."

Sakamoto gave it some thought. But seeing Quatre was not about to back down, he finally acquiesced: "Alright, maybe I'll take you up on the offer. But I'll stick close by. Just in case you need me."

That was a fair enough compromise.

A podium had been set up on the lawn of the park, signage declaring the organization's name and its mission: "seeking a brighter future for the children of space." A small crowd had already gathered while the event's coordinators performed their sound checks.

One of them spotted Quatre and bounced over to shake his hand and thank him for coming. She was an energetic young woman, perhaps just out of university. Not so much younger than himself, but with a fresh exuberance that reminded him she must have been a child in primary school while he was fighting a war. "I can't tell you how much it means to us that you've agreed to speak today, Mr. Winner. It's been an uphill battle for us to make people aware of issues like this, let alone to get them to take interest. Without more high-profile supporters like yourself helping the cause, I don't know how we would ever get the funding these kids desperately need."

"It's the least I can do," he said, shrugging off her flattery. "I feel like I would be abandoning them if I didn't speak up. A lot of my closest friends were test-tube babies, and now they're struggling to raise their own children in space. I can only begin to imagine the sacrifices they must make."

"Still, the fact that you took time away from your campaign for us—not to mention, the courage it must have taken after admitting—"

She stopped herself short and turned her eyes; and now Quatre noticed what had caught her attention: a small group of protesters, gathered at the edge of the park, taking a coffee break around picket signs more than one of which, Quatre noticed, had his name on them. Not a foreign sight by any means. He was used to seeing groups like theirs at home, outside his office window or the spaceport. He only found out that morning that there had been protesters outside the museum gala as well. Une must have done her best to make sure they stayed out of the guests' lines of sight, because they hadn't muddied the festive mood.

"I'm sorry," the young woman said. She seemed embarrassed for him. "You must get enough of that at home."

"I don't mind. They have every right to be here, expressing their opinions. I like to think of this as a sign of the colonies' healthy democracy at work."

"I guess. But it's a little insensitive, don't you think, protesting your involvement in a war more than a decade ago at a rally to help the children? Seems to me like they're missing the point."

He covered a laugh with a discrete cough as they arrived at the stage. The rest of the organizers were eager to shake his hand and express their gratitude. From behind the podium, he watched the crowd trickle in: supporters, many of them mothers with children by the looks of them, wearing the colors of the cause; others, members of the medical and biotech community in the colonies; no doubt a few who were only there to catch a glimpse of a celebrity in the flesh. And, of course, the ubiquitous TV journalists, setting up in their section below the stage.

When it came time to start the event itself, he took his chair among the other speakers, and awaited his turn.

"Now I'd like to introduce to you a very special guest," the fund-raiser's master of ceremonies said. "You all know him as the scion of the Winner family—and L4's next president elect, if the polls are any indication. A celebrated humanitarian, innovator, and war veteran of the colonies—" though Quatre noticed he was careful not to say gundam pilot— "who has never been too proud to discuss his own start as a test-tube baby. Please give a warm welcome to Mr. Quatre Winner."

Quatre gave a wave to the attendees as he made his way to the microphone. Their applause and whistles of support easily drowned out the few boos of protesters; but even if he had been greeted by nothing but silence, the bright smile still would have come to his lips as naturally as it did now, it had become so rote ever since his return to public life in place of his father.

"Thank you all for coming," he began. "And thanks to the organizers of this event for shedding new light on the matter of the health of the children of the colonies.

"With all due respect to that introduction, today I'm not here as a candidate, or even as a citizen of the colonies. This issue is too important for us to let it become politicized, or regionalized. It's an issue that affects all of humanity, as long as there are those among us who commute to work in space, or plan to live in space for any length of time. Or those who, like myself and my father and grandfather before me, were born and raised in the colonies. That number is increasing every day—in fact, the fastest growing demographic is space-born colonists—but the challenges of conceiving and raising children in space remain with us as strongly as they did two centuries ago. In fact, they are worse, as the longer mankind remains in space, the more unique problems continue to arise, with little precedent for our medical professionals to draw on for solutions. They try their best to keep up, but they can't do it without all our support.

"Some of you are probably wondering," he began again after a short pause, "why someone like me, who has no children, would choose to become an advocate for child development, of all things. But some of you, I'm sure, are already aware of my family history. The Winner family has been in space for over a century, and as a result, we've experienced our fair share of difficulty conceiving and carrying children to term. Back in the early days of space exploration, that difficulty was seen as a source of shame—for both men and women, whose society told them it was somehow their fault, something flawed in their own nature rather than a side effect of their environment.

"It still is a source of shame for many people, and one of the few taboo subjects left in our modern age. I know that as for myself, when most adolescents begin struggling with their body image or who they planned to be, I struggled with the knowledge that I was among the many citizens of L4 born from an artificial womb. But with time I've learned that there is nothing to be ashamed of when we consider the great lengths human beings are willing to go to in order to bring new life into this world. In order to create families. In order to ensure that their race lives on. We should see that struggle as a source of pride, not only as colonists but as human beings, and engage our scientific community and our politicians in more open dialogues, to ensure that those children and their families who need our help most can get it."

Quatre paused to take a momentary breather as the crowd broke into applause and cheers of support.

But it a particular flash of light among all those faces that caught his attention, and made his heart skip a beat. If not for the bright daylight, he would have easily missed it, a certain reflection he remembered well enough after all these years he did not need to look twice, or second-guess his instincts.

The reflection of light off the barrel of a gun.

Quatre didn't think. Standing still, he was dead. So he moved, just as he heard the pistol go off. Once. Twice.

There was screaming. Scenes of shock and panic in the crowd, while behind him the event's other speakers and organizers hit the stage or ducked down, covering their heads. Quatre didn't look back to see if anyone was injured. One knee on the stage, the other leg tensed to take off at a moment's notice, he scanned the crowd for the gunman.

And then he felt the familiar sting that made his breath catch in his chest. He'd been hit.

He could feel the warmth of blood trickling down his back. A dark red spot of it marred the front of his jacket and was spreading. No matter how inured to bloodshed war had made him, the sight of his own blood still had the ability to make him feel faint. But still he had to see it, he had to see where the bullet had hit. He had to make sure—

The voices blurred into one echoing din. Through it all, someone was calling his name. A shadow fell over him.

"It went through and through," Quatre told the person without looking up, his voice shaking as much from relief as pain. "Don't worry about me. Right now you've got to go after the shooter before anyone else gets hurt."

"Relax, Quatre, we're already on it. He won't get far. But you need to _calm down._ I won't have you going into shock before the ambulance gets here, not on my watch_._"

At that familiar voice, Quatre finally looked up. And blinked in disbelief. "Wufei? What are you doing here?"

He was crouched down beside Quatre, wearing the Preventer colors, his pistol out at his side as his other hand gripped Quatre's shoulder. Hard. Grounding him there. "Right now?" Wufei said. "Just trying to keep you alive."


	5. Chapter 5

"Hel_-lo-o_. Earth to Trowa Barton."

Trowa shook himself out of his stare for what must have been the dozenth time that hour, shifting higher in the passenger seat of their rental car to declare, "I'm not ignoring you, Dorothy."

"Oh really? Then you wouldn't mind reiterating for me what I was just saying?"

Usually he was up for this game of theirs, but today he was having trouble finding the energy to humor her. Dorothy didn't have to know the reasons, though. She didn't have to know the details of the conversation earlier that morning with Quatre he kept going over in his mind. It was enough to just admit he was distracted and leave it at her, "That's what I thought."

But another few minutes of driving along in painful silence, only the clumsy jokes of the variety show playing on the car's television screen to fill the awkwardness between them—and not doing a very good job of it, at that—and she couldn't let it be.

"Are you upset with me about something, Trowa?"

He started. "Why would I be?"

"That's what I'd like to know. Everything seemed fine between us last night. I know for a fact it was more than fine this morning," she added with a knowing smirk. "And then something happened right about the time I finally managed to haul myself out of your grip and into the shower. So. I can't help wondering. Was it something I did?"

On some other day, Trowa would have laughed. It was just like Dorothy to be so diplomatic about everything. And vain. Neither of them had any reason to lie to the other. That was a mutual understanding they had reached when their business partnership had become something more. Not because either one distrusted the other, but because they were both types who hated to act on a deficit of information, to which the most brutal honesty was still preferable.

So he told her: "It's not you. It's Quatre."

Dorothy laughed. "What, did you two have a quarrel I wasn't aware of?"

"Sort of." But surely it wasn't a lie, not even one of omission, if you simply chose not to go into details. "He asked us to dinner tonight."

"And?"

Trowa frowned. It did seem like he had left room for an "and". "I'm just not sure right now whether it's worth the trouble. What with your busy schedule—"

"Well, why don't the two of you go without me? Problem solved. I'm sure you have a lot of catching up to do without me tagging along." At his blank look, she assured him, "If I get really bored, I can always pester Miss Relena into keeping me company."

Leave it to Dorothy to find the sensible solution at the drop of a hat, but Trowa couldn't help feeling she was missing the point. "Funny. Quatre said the same thing."

That earned him a queer look. Thankfully, Trowa wasn't the butt of it.

"That's interesting," she said, in that tone he recognized from just before she moved in to verbally eviscerate a political opponent. "You know, somehow I get the feeling he's none too happy with me right now. Ever since we all met at the club the other day, he's been acting strange. Would you happen to know why, Trowa? I for one don't know _what _I could have done to upset him, and he's far too much of a gentleman to ever tell me—though I would have thought we'd have known each other well enough by now for that not to matter. Perhaps you can slyly sneak it into the conversation, then let me know later what the answer is, assuage my guilty conscience?"

That at last pulled a laugh from Trowa, however small. "I don't think his problem is with you, per se," he told her. "I'm pretty sure it rests soundly with me."

When she pulled the car to a stop at the light, Dorothy turned to face him squarely. "Be honest with me, Trowa. You two had something, didn't you?"

"I don't know what you mean."

"Don't give me that coy tone of voice, Trowa Barton, I'm proficient at it myself, remember? I'd have to be blind and deaf not to see the chemistry between you two. So just tell me the truth. Were you and Quatre lovers?"

He sobered, faced the dash as they started to move forward again. How to answer that question aloud, in words, when he didn't even know the answer himself. When just the question made his pulse quicken like something he'd thought dead and buried was suddenly trying to get out.

"Nothing happened," he settled for.

She glanced over at him, not quite believing. "You're positive. Because it wouldn't bother me if it had. Happened, I mean. What's in the past is in the past, and if our previous sexual partners happened to be—"

"Dorothy. _Nothing happened._ The intent was there." If not the will. "It just never panned out."

"Oh." To his surprise, she almost sounded disappointed. "You mean, you two never—not even during the war—"

"Not even during the war."

"Well, damn it," Dorothy said, it seemed, more to the steering wheel than him. "I guess I owe Hilde one after all. Think she'll agree to call us even if I get her a really nice baby present? I'm thinking something designer."

Trowa blinked at her. "You bet on us?"

"Well, someone had to. Did you see that picture on the front page of the paper this morning? You two were locking eyes like a couple of starving jungle creatures ready to devour one another." He nearly choked at her metaphor, causing Dorothy to laugh as well. "Can you blame me for being a little jealous?"

"I had no idea." Though jealous was the last thing she sounded like, Trowa thought, smiling. Her acceptance already put him in a better mood, even if she only knew half the story. As for his own feelings, he would try to explain them better tonight, so long as Quatre was willing to hear him out. They'd been apart too long to let what friendship they still had suffer any more because of pride.

"We interrupt this program to bring you breaking news of shots fired in the Veinte Memorial Peace Park. It happened only minutes ago, at a fund-raising rally where resource magnate and presidential candidate Quatre Winner was speaking. At this point, it appears there are no fatalities, but Mr. Winner has been hit. We repeat: Our sources confirm Quatre Winner has been injured after shots were fired at Veinte Memorial Park. The area has been evacuated, and local authorities are on the scene, though at this time we cannot say for sure—"

Dorothy looked over at him, eyes wide in concern. "Trowa—"

She didn't have to say anything else. He was already on it. Mobile out, he punched in the number he never hoped to use.

An answer came through not more than two seconds later. "Barton."

"Wufei." Trowa started. That was unexpectedly fast. "You're on the colony."

"I'm with him right now."

Must be in an ambulance. Trowa heard sirens in the background.

"Address?"

"Sending it to you."

"What, are you two telepathic?" Dorothy asked, trying to keep up and drive them safely through traffic at the same time. "Care to clue me in? I think I missed something in translation."

True to Wufei's word, the address for a local hospital appeared on Trowa's screen. Unfortunately, not as local as he would have liked. His heart sank a bit. "That's all the way on the other side of the colony."

Dorothy grinned. To her, there were never more magic words. "Then I guess it's lucky for you I'm driving. Tell Wufei we'll see him in twenty minutes, and not a second more."

Trowa made sure to secure himself to the bar on the door with his free hand, not a moment before Dorothy spun the wheel, pulling them into a hard and fast u-turn. The rental car's tires protested, the vehicle lacking both the power and handling that Dorothy was used to, but she seemed to take it simply as a personal challenge as she sped them in the direction of the hospital. "God, I love diplomatic immunity!"

Turning back to his mobile, Trowa said, "Let him know I'm on my way."

With a nod, Wufei disconnected. That alone allowed Trowa to lean back in the passenger seat and breathe, even as their car wove in and out of traffic at breakneck speed.

Quatre's injuries were not life-threatening. If they had been, he would have heard it in Wufei's voice for sure.

-o-

The thing about having so many news stations represented at the fund-raising event, they all had their own angle of the shooting to broadcast ad nauseam, all day long.

The nurse checking his vitals one last time sighed and shook her head, no doubt in disapproval of his watching; but as far as Quatre was concerned, he needed to learn from this third-person view of the event what he could. His own memory of the few seconds between when he spotted the gun and when he noticed Wufei crouching over him was a little different from how it played out on the news. He watched the realization dawn on his own face, then as he yelled for everyone on stage to get down—one particular detail he did not remember at all in the confusion.

"Nice to see you still have your reflexes," Wufei said as he let himself in. His arms were folded across his chest, but his smug grin seemed, for the moment, almost proud of Quatre. "Your quick thinking probably saved some lives today."

"It's just luck that I was the only one hit. Though I'd hoped that if I were assassinated during a speech, it would be a slightly more important one."

Wufei's smile fell at that. "This isn't a joking matter, Quatre. If you hadn't moved when you did, or if that bullet had hit a few centimeters lower, we might not be having this conversation. Just because this isn't the first hole you've had poked in you, doesn't mean you can downplay the seriousness of this threat."

"I know that. But I'm also not going to play the what-if game. If I did that after every time someone tried to kill me—"

Rather than finish that line of thought, Quatre let out a deep breath. He switched off the hospital room's television. His left shoulder ached beneath its bandaging. The spot where the bullet had penetrated the flesh—just below his left clavicle—was a particularly sensitive one if relatively harmless, and he'd experienced much worse. All things considered, he actually felt like he had more energy than he'd woken up with. Though Wufei would probably just tell him that was the adrenaline talking. "At least the doctor thinks I'm well enough to go home."

"So he does. But don't think that means you're getting away from _me _so easily. Just because you managed to convince your handlers back home you could come on this trip without the proper protection, doesn't mean I'm going to be as lax on you."

Like a guard dog, in fact, he watched Quatre's every move with a critical eye, even as the nurse helped him get his injured arm back into his shirt sleeve. Maybe Wufei should have been watching her instead, because she was none too gentle with Quatre. As if the orange juice and crackers he left unfinished or his eagerness to be released were some personal affront. Just another reason he didn't like hospitals.

"You need to stop being so reckless, Quatre. You can't just out yourself to the world sphere as one of the gundam pilots while you're running for such a high office, and then expect no one's going to want to take a swing at you. On top of which," Wufei added, "Trowa's timing couldn't be any worse, as far as you are concerned. But he didn't force you to make this trip, and he certainly didn't ask you to expose yourself to this degree."

"What you see as exposure, the people of L4 call transparency. I am only acting as they'd want me to, as an honest and open leader."

"Even if that _honesty_ leaves you _open_ to attack? This is about your life; it has nothing to do with setting a good example. Need I remind you, you're not a gundam pilot anymore. You can't just come and go as you wish without anyone recognizing you."

Instead of responding, Quatre asked the nurse, who was finishing adjusting his sling, "Can I see visitors now?"

Wufei sighed deeply in surrender, and went to the door. "As long as you don't let them get you too worked up," the nurse said.

Wufei barely opened the door and Duo and Hilde came spilling through, followed close behind by Dorothy and Trowa. The latter two hardly said a word, their relief plain enough on their faces. But the former had more than enough to say for everyone, both talking at once, both plying him with questions and their own concern. Quatre laughed. He hardly knew where to begin with Hilde and Duo, except to assure them he was alright, that the shooter had missed anything vital, and that, no, he hadn't been scared or in much pain.

Over Duo's shoulder, he caught Trowa's smile. Albeit one tinged with worries now only just relieved.

"The news wouldn't give away too many details," Dorothy said to Wufei, with a jab of her thumb toward the visitor's lobby. "Have you caught the shooter? Do you know where he came from?"

"At this point, we have little to go on. Though the shooter has been . . . apprehended, so to speak. We know _who _he is, and that he appears to have been working alone, but we can't confirm that. We might have been able to get some useful information out of him," Wufei added, a bitter edge to his voice, "if one of our agents hadn't killed him in pursuit."

"What was I supposed to do? He could have opened fire as he was fleeing the scene, putting who knows how many innocent bystanders in danger. If you really wanna know, I actually missed. I was aiming at the scumbag's head."

Quatre couldn't help himself. He gaped as his driver let himself into the secured room, face and chauffeur's jacket perfectly arranged, and shut the door behind him so matter-of-factly that Quatre half expected him to light up a cigarette and order a drink.

"If you're losing your touch, maybe it's time to retire, old man," Wufei laid into him. "Meanwhile, we still don't know who the gunman might have been working with or what his actual motivation was."

"Oh, I think his motivation was clear enough," Sakamoto said, meeting Quatre's eyes across the room. "Don't you? Eliminate the Winner line."

A growl of frustration threatened to work its way past Wufei's lips. "I prefer to suspend my judgment until all the facts are in. But thanks to you, it looks like that's now going to take a lot longer."

"Hey," said Sakamoto, "you can complain about this to your lady director all you want, be my guest, but I stand by my decision. I was only doing my duty as a Preventer: protecting my charge and the citizens of the colony. My only regret is that I failed to take the bastard out before he fired the first shot. If I had done that, Mr. Winner wouldn't be in this situation and none of us would even be here right now."

"Wait a second," Quatre said. "Mr. Sakamoto, you've been a Preventer agent this whole time?"

In all the confusion, Quatre hadn't given much thought to his driver. It was not without some difficulty he tried to picture the cool, cheerful man who had waited up all last night for him whipping a pistol out of his chauffeur's jacket to take down a would-be assassin in the middle of a public park. Rashid hadn't just sent Quatre a driver in Henry Sakamoto; he'd sent him another Heero Yuy.

"Not to worry, Quatre, he's been thoroughly vetted."

"By who!"

Wufei blinked at him. Like he should already know the answer to that. "For starters? By your father."

Duo started to give an impressed whistle, but a glare from Quatre cut him short.

So his driver had known—the Preventers had all known about the death threats, how serious they had actually been, and they had chosen not to inform him. Quatre stood up in outrage. He heard the nurse telling him to sit back down, but it hardly registered as he rounded on Wufei. "Why wasn't I told about any of this?"

Wufei turned to him like he just remembered Quatre was in the room. "We didn't think you would take the appropriate measures even if you were informed. So, when Mr. Kurama mentioned Agent Sakamoto's background to me, we put him on the case. He'd been trying to track down the shooter's identity for some time, before we decided to assign him to be your bodyguard for this trip."

"And you didn't give me a say in any of it?" Quatre said. "This concerns _me_, Wufei! Don't you think I'd want to know if there was a real threat to my life? Or that my driver was one of your agents?"

"Come on, Q." Duo put a hand on his good arm, but Quatre shrugged him off.

"You went over my head!" he snarled at Wufei.

"Someone had to, since you didn't seem very interested in keeping it! Honestly, I thought Heero Yuy had the worst death wish I'd ever seen. But after seeing your behavior here, I think you take the cake."

Hearing Wufei mention their missing comrade in such a vein was one thing, but Quatre had never heard him raise his voice quite like that before, let alone at one of them. Back off, a small, shamed voice told him from inside, but his whole body shook and his head felt light with indignation. Indignation at being kept in the dark like some child told to look away, at hearing them all talk about him and around him like he wasn't in the room, as if he couldn't make decisions for himself. Did they no longer consider him their equal?

"Mr. Winner, please sit down!" the nurse said again, and this time it was not a request. "You're in no condition for this!"

He did as he was told, albeit reluctantly, and then realized the wisdom in her order. What he had mistaken for rage—the clamminess of his skin, the bout of shakes—was no doubt due more to loss of blood than genuine anger. He had to take it easy.

But at the same time, his pride would not let him admit Wufei and Sakamoto had been right.

Perhaps cowed by the nurse's words, taking it as a personal accusation, or else simply having no more to say, Wufei was silent. It was Trowa who broke the stalemate when the nurse finally excused herself and left.

"I'll take Quatre back to his room. If he's free to leave."

Quatre turned to him, but Trowa wouldn't return his gaze. It was focused on Wufei, waiting—or perhaps, challenging—him for his approval. "You can't protect him as easily in a public hospital as you can in a hotel. Besides, what use is there in keeping him here when he's clearly well enough to be moved?"

Grudgingly, Wufei conceded the point.

"Sounds fair enough." He unholstered his pistol and unclipped his earpiece, holding them out for Trowa to take. "I suppose you're just as qualified as any of our agents to keep an eye on him. I'll be on line two, if anything comes up."

_Keep an eye on me_, Quatre thought with disdain. But it mesmerized him a bit to see Trowa handling the other's pistol so easily, as he ran through the cursory checks and tucked the piece into the back waistband of his trousers. As if no time at all had passed.

"You should take our car," Dorothy offered. "It's a rental. No one will think to track it. Unless I have reason to believe someone might want me dead as well."

"Aside from the usual?" Wufei said, not without a hint of sarcasm.

"I'll ride back to our hotel with Mr. Sakamoto," she went on, to the driver's acquiescent nod. "Quatre should change rooms after this anyway. Let everyone think he's booked a room at my hotel. It should keep the paparazzi off his trail at least long enough for him to relocate."

She smiled at Quatre. "Looks like you two will get to have that dinner after all."

While the room's other occupants wondered what she meant by that, Wufei nodded. "Much as I hate to admit it, Ms. Catalonia and I are in complete agreement this time. In the meantime, Trowa can help him get his things in order. My team will scope out a new location, set up surveillance around the entrances, and move him in there before the day is out."

"Don't I get a say in any of this?" Quatre said.

The five pairs of eyes that rounded on him answered with an emphatic "_no"._ Duo could only offer him a shrug in sympathy.

-o-

At least they allowed Quatre to walk himself down to the parking garage with Trowa, rather than forcing him to be pushed in a chair. Other than the ache in his shoulder, he was ready to put this whole episode behind him. His schedule for the rest of the week was still full. He had enough in his future to think about, no time to dwell on what might have happened.

However, he owed it to Wufei and Sakamoto, for their efforts, to be more cooperative as well. Even if it was going to take Quatre a conscious effort not to push himself to his normal limits, the least he could do was help the Preventers wrap up his case in whatever way he could, now that the man responsible was no longer a threat.

Trowa's grip, tight on his right arm, made him stop up short.

Two men in impeccable suits were waiting beside a black van directly in their path. Earpieces in, they looked for all intents and purposes like part of a security team meant to keep someone like himself out of harm's way.

So why didn't Quatre like the look of them at all when they glanced in his direction?

"Mr. Winner?" one of them said. "This way, please. We've been assigned to escort you safely back to your hotel."

He took a few steps forward, hand extended. But Quatre refused to shake it. "I haven't been notified. Last I checked, Mr. Barton here was supposed to take me."

"I understand why you would think that, sir, but the orders have been changed."

Trowa narrowed his eyes as he stepped between them and Quatre. "These orders came from Agent Bloom?"

"Yes, sir. He called not a minute ago to inform us we were to take Mr. Winner into our protective custody. You can check with him yourself if you'd like."

This wasn't right. Not right at all. Whatever he and Trowa were going to do, they had better do it fast, because there was no way Quatre was going to get in that van.

By the way Trowa tensed, he must have come to the same conclusion. Even Quatre knew there was no Agent Bloom. Trowa made to reach for the gun at the small of his back—

"I wouldn't do that if I were you."

They both froze at the cock of the pistol, Quatre all the more when it came right next to his ear. A third man neither of them had seen coming before now gripped him tight in place, using Quatre as his shield.

And as his leverage, as his mates drew their own pieces at Trowa.

* * *

**A note on the technology:** Since _Gundam Wing_ generally appears to be set in an alternate universe parallel to ours, in which A.C. 195 is roughly equivalent to 1995 C.E. in terms of technological advancement—with the obvious exceptions of, like, space colonies and mobile suits, of course—I am going to take the huge leap of extrapolating that their communication technology follows along similar lines of development as in our universe, with mobile cell phones replacing stationary units as people's main mode of communication as of A.C. 208. Of course, this being _Gundam_, they're still parsecs ahead of us in terms of video communication.

Likewise, because this is _Gundam_, there doesn't seem to be much canon thought as to how long it takes two parties to communicate between colonies in real-time. For the purposes of this story, and for the sake of compromise, I'm just going to assume that there is some undisclosed amount of lag time, which Trowa doesn't experience only because the person he's calling, Wufei, happens to be inside the same colony. Hope that clears up any confusion.


	6. Chapter 6

Trowa slowly raised his hands.

"You don't want to do this," he said, and Quatre's couldn't help but envy his calm at the moment. "You're making a big mistake."

One of the men holding him up smirked, while his partner disarmed Trowa.

"Mistake?" said the voice at Quatre's ear. "I don't think so. Unless this _isn't _the same Quatre Raberba Winner who was a gundam pilot during the war, and now thinks he can run for his father's office as if he somehow _weren't _responsible for some of the greatest war crimes perpetrated on the colonies. But I don't think that's the case. No, I think I have the man I want, right where I want him."

He must be the ringleader, Quatre thought, here to finish what his colleague started in the park. The timing was too perfect for them not to be working together. Which meant these men also wanted him dead. Though his shoulder ached, Quatre had to keep his wits about him if they were both going to get out of this. He couldn't afford to be distracted by the knowledge that there was a gun pointed at his head. Hospital security was minutes away—at best. Quatre and Trowa couldn't rely on them to get here on time. What they needed was a weakness, and to be ready to take advantage of it at a moment's notice.

"Now I know where I've seen this guy before," the first man said, shaking his gun at Trowa. "He's that Barton guy from the museum. The one who wants to bring back mobile suits."

"The ex-gundam pilot?" the second scoffed. "Could we really be that lucky?"

Quatre could hear their leader's grin. "Two gundam pilots in one place, and no witnesses. This is going to be easier than I thought."

"Then this has nothing to do with my family, or the campaign," Quatre said. "It's about the war. Revenge. That's all it is, isn't it?"

By his tone of voice, the ringleader almost seemed surprised that Quatre had spoken. "Not revenge. _Justice._ The gundams were supposed to _protect_ the colonies. But what happened? They ran and hid the second they fucked up their mission, and let OZ oppress us even more than the Alliance ever did with their sanctions, their martial laws. And just when we thought it couldn't get any worse, that other gundam shows up, that _Zero_—"

Quatre started. Had he figured out what the media sphere so far had not: the true identity of Wing Zero's first pilot?

"You have every right to be angry," he said. "We weren't perfect. No one is in war. But it's been more than ten years. We've all paid for our mistakes—"

Bad choice of words. The ringleader tightened his grip on Quatre.

"I don't think you have. I don't think any of you have bothered to _try_ to make up for what that gundam did to us. It _destroyed_ our homes, our livelihood—whole colonies gone in seconds. Like they were never even there! How many people do you think lost their lives because of Zero's actions? Because the rest of you were too weak to stand up to it?

"And what has the Unified Nation done about it?" the man said through clenched teeth. "Absolutely nothing! They know exactly what you bastards were responsible for, and they go and make you heroes for it, let you do whatever you damn well please! We never asked you to fight for us in the first place, and now you want to run our lives all over again? Well, we won't let that happen."

They sound just like us, Quatre thought, once upon a time. And he told them so. "But you're right about one thing. We can't turn back time, and we can't bring back the colonies that were destroyed. All we can do now is try our best to build a better future for ourselves. That's all I've tried to do ever since the war ended.

"But if you're still determined to rid the world of me, then why don't you shoot me already. Your friend didn't hesitate in the park, so what's keeping you now?"

Surprise flashed across Trowa's eyes for just a moment, a moment of silent doubt. But then they hardened. No, he had more faith in Quatre than that. In the two of them. He saw where this was going.

The two men holding him up were growing antsy. They weren't here to talk, and yet they dared not make a move without their leader's approval.

Despite the direness of his own situation, Quatre forced a laugh. "What? Don't you think you can take both of us?" he said to his captor. "Or could it be that after all the trouble you went through to set this plot up, the only thing you're still afraid of is leaving a messy crime scene?"

His captor growled. "Get inside. Both of you."

As Quatre expected, the man pushed him toward the van. With his concentration split between keeping both his grip and his aim on his hostage, it was the best chance Quatre could hope for. Though he knew his chances of the man pulling the trigger on reflex and putting a bullet in his head were probably as good as half, his life was forfeit anyway if he did nothing. And there was some advantage to being tall.

When they were within arm's reach of the vehicle, Quatre stumbled. With his good arm, he reached up and grabbed his captor's sleeve, pushing the man's arm up and away. Though it had been over a decade since he'd been in a mobile suit, for the second time that day Quatre's reflexes did not fail him when he needed them. The pistol went off, but the shot was wide. Still, Quatre couldn't allow himself to dwell on what might have been.

A more pressing concern was making sure he didn't give the man a second chance. He slammed his uninjured shoulder into his captor with all his weight behind it, pinning him by the arm to the door of the van. The man growled. A wince escaped Quatre as well. He was in no shape for this, and he must have landed on a nerve because an unpleasant tingling shot through the whole lower half of his arm.

But he couldn't let his captor go free now no matter what happened. Not as long as he still had that pistol in his grip.

And he would have to do it on his own, because Trowa was preoccupied with the other two at present.

At the first sign of the commotion, one of the would-be assassins swung his aim toward Quatre and their boss. Trowa didn't allow him the opportunity to even think about firing. He kicked the gun away, and, while it rattled away under the van, grabbed the man by the collar and swung him bodily into his colleague. The other shoved him away hard, growling his frustration as he was forced to step back and lower his pistol. His colleague's momentum hadn't brought him down, but it slowed him up enough for Trowa's purposes. Enough to close in tight and deliver a devil of a blow to his solar plexus.

The second man folded like a lawn chair just as the first was coming back around for more. Trowa blocked his kicks easily enough, but one wild swing from the man and it was all over. Trowa came up from his crouch with a precise chop to the side of his neck Heero would have been proud of, and his attacker crumpled. Both of them lay all but motionless where they fell, incapacitated, and it had only taken seconds.

Seconds, unfortunately, were all Quatre had. With only one good arm to work with, he couldn't expect to wrestle the ringleader's gun away _and_ hold him in place for very long. As he struggled, he didn't see Trowa bend to retrieve Wufei's pistol, or heft the second man's piece in his palm.

The leader's knuckles bled where Quatre had slammed his right hand into the van's chassis. But his left was still free to push back. As he scrabbled for purchase against Quatre, Quatre saw stars as the man's fingers pressed into his exit wound. That allowed his captor to find good enough leverage to finally shove him away, and Quatre stumbled back, sure he was a dead man now—

He landed against a solid body just as the second shot was fired.

But when Quatre looked back at his captor, the man had frozen in place with the pistol still down at his side, a fresh bullet hole in the side of the van next to his ear.

"Drop it," Trowa told him.

And it wasn't a suggestion. The shot had come from behind Quatre—a little close for Quatre's comfort, as the ringing in his ear testified. It was Trowa who had fired, and Trowa's arm against his back, preventing his fall.

When the ringleader hesitated, he said, "The way I see it, there are only two ways you're getting out of here: in cuffs, or in a body bag. It's your choice, but I'm not going to give you a third chance to decide."

He was serious, too. Trowa would not hesitate to kill this man if he showed the slightest sign of posing another threat. No doubt the inhuman calm in his eyes was the same as Sakamoto's before he pulled the trigger in the park.

And it's because of me, Quatre thought, because they threatened _me_.

The ringleader saw it as well. A man like him, Quatre feared, if he was anything like the assassin he had sent into the park, would probably choose death to failure and capture.

But perhaps Quatre overestimated him. The leader came to his senses and relaxed his grip, allowing the pistol to fall to the concrete. He followed Trowa's orders to get down on the ground as well—though he had little choice in the matter with the business end of a gun staring him between the eyes every step of the way.

When the man was in position, Quatre found the pistol pushed into his hand. It was still warm.

"Keep that trained on him," Trowa said. He need not have wasted his breath; Quatre knew what to do. His hand didn't even shake.

Though Quatre doubted he would have the strength of will to pull the trigger if he needed to, and just prayed his attacker did not get it in his head to test him.

While Trowa called for back-up, Quatre was allowed his first good look at the man. Average and nondescript, he could have been anyone. Certainly he was no one Quatre recognized as having met before.

It was his stare that made him stand out, filled with a hatred aimed squarely at Quatre the likes of which he hadn't seen in even the most vocal protesters. He was used to critics, used to people who seemed to believe it was their moral duty to disapprove of everything he did. But this pure, ugly, unadulterated hatred, this hatred that burned so deep nothing could calm it but his own bodily harm—that was a new experience.

The closest team of Preventers couldn't reach them fast enough.

-o-

They drove in an uncomfortable silence after that, what happened in the parking garage still too fresh in both their minds to talk about it beyond the brief statements they had given Wufei.

It was Trowa who eventually broached the subject. "What you did back there was reckless, Quatre. You could have gotten yourself killed."

"I had to do something. Their aim was to kill us anyway."

"Yes, but there were other ways of dealing with the situation that didn't put your life at quite so much risk. Daring him to shoot you was not one of them. If you had just let me—"

Instead of finishing that thought, Trowa gave up with a sigh. This was not an argument either of them wanted to have at the present. But unlike Quatre, Trowa wasn't content to let it continue.

"I'm sorry," Quatre said after another moment had passed.

"Never mind. The bad guys were apprehended, order was restored—"

"But you're right. I should have been more careful. About everything." He wasn't thirteen anymore, reckless and spoiled and feeling like a redundancy—and an unwanted one at that. He wasn't fifteen, with an impenetrable mobile suit to protect him against hell and high water, and all matter of heavy weaponry in between. Maybe that story in _Today _had rubbed off on him a bit.

Unbeatable Winner.

But still mortal, no matter how long or how well his luck held out. Trowa was right. He couldn't afford to place himself in harm's way now. There was too much riding on his survival.

"You're trembling."

Trowa's hand on his shoulder made Quatre shiver. When the shivering didn't cease, he finally noticed the slight shaking in his muscles. His stomach felt sour as well. In all the commotion, Quatre hadn't given a single thought to taking it easy. He hadn't had time.

The gesture was reassuring, but Trowa hadn't meant it as such. Firmly but careful of his injury, he turned Quatre to face him. There was a newer, lighter stain showing through his shirt, but after two close-call attempts on his life in one day, a little blood failed to rouse any sense of urgency in Quatre. "Huh. Must have done that when I was kicking ass."

Trowa chuckled at that. "I'll patch you back up once we get to your room." He flashed Quatre an unusually rakish smile. "I like to think I'm pretty good at it."

The hotel, however, was swarming with press and gawkers. From across the street, they could see some supporters among them had even turned out with electric candles.

Which seemed to Quatre to be overdoing it a little. It wasn't as if he had died. "I guess Dorothy's ruse hasn't thrown them all off my scent yet."

"The crowd could be bigger," Trowa said, not having quite Quatre's lack of faith in his fiancée. "There must be a door around back for deliveries. Wufei should have a team here by now. They can sneak us in there."

Quatre slouched down in his seat, shielding his face as they turned in toward the hotel. "I leave that part in your capable hands."

-o-

In addition to a first aid kit, Trowa managed to snag a few cans and things from the hotel kitchen on their way up, enough to throw together something he modestly called camp cooking. But the aroma of it all boiling together on the kitchenette stove was more than sufficient to reawaken the appetite Quatre had thought he'd lost over the course of the day.

"There," Trowa said at last. "Good as new."

Quatre smoothed his right hand over his dressing job. There was something to be said for the healing feel—and scent—of new bandages, even on the nastiest wound. Trowa's felt more secure as well, though far from constricting; Quatre had no problem rotating his arm a bit experimentally.

Well, no problem but the pain. He winced.

"You really should take something for that," Trowa said. As usual, nothing got by him. "Didn't they give you a prescription on your way out?"

"I don't like the way those industrial strength pain meds make me feel." Which wasn't the total truth. It wasn't that Quatre preferred the lucidity the full brunt of the pain provided him, but he did feel an obligation to feel every bit of it until he was healed. Maybe a martyr streak did run in his family. "Anyway, would _you _take them?"

Trowa didn't even have to think about it. "Good point."

But Quatre was eager to change the subject. "You know, youreally are good at this, Trowa. How come you never went into medicine after the war? Rather than, say, engineering."

Trowa smiled shyly, eager to put the kitchenette counter between himself and that question. "Short answer? I guess because machines have always been easier to figure out than people. If you mess up with a machine, you can always retrace your steps, pull out what you did and start over again. No irreparable harm done. You don't always get second chances with human beings."

He paused in the middle of stirring the pot. "Also, I guess it just would have seemed too . . . normal."

And they were far from normal, Quatre mused, following his train of thought. It seemed to work well enough for some people, but— "You mean you never wanted to become a regular old developer, working a nine to five office job, commuting with the masses?" That was where they parted ways with Duo.

Trowa shrugged. Normal just wasn't for the two of them. It would feel like running away.

While he doled out two bowls for their dinner, Quatre attempted to shrug into a clean shirt, one that didn't smell like blood. About half way through tugging it over his injured arm, however, he realized what a near impossible task it was to accomplish on his own.

"A little help?" It wasn't a question on Trowa's part. Once again, he spotted Quatre's anguish when he most wanted it to stay hidden.

"I can manage."

That earned him a little laugh. Trowa was at his side in two seconds, guiding Quatre's arms into their holes slowly, gingerly, mindful of his injury. So mindful, Quatre forgot to make a sound when the wound pulled uncomfortably. He really should have been a doctor, Trowa, anything but a child soldier and mobile suit pilot. As cruel as he could be to an enemy, he could be a thousand times more gentle with a friend.

Perhaps in another life they might have been spared all the anguish of their younger selves—and never have needed to cross paths. Whether that would have been a blessing was difficult to say.

The brush of Trowa's fingers over his bare skin made Quatre shiver. His gaze over Quatre's shoulder seemed to linger over his form a bit longer than when he'd been redoing the bandages. Quatre was tempted to joke that he had nothing Trowa hadn't seen before, but it had been years since they briefly shared a living space. They had both changed. Grown into bodies that were new and awkward at the time.

"I couldn't help noticing," Trowa said. Before Quatre could protest, Trowa turned to face him and helped himself to doing up the buttons. "When I was changing your dressing. This isn't the first time you've been shot."

Quatre faltered for a moment, caught in the feel of Trowa's fingertips just on the other side of the cotton, completely different from the clinical manner they'd had redressing his wounds. Somehow he'd always imagined if Trowa had anything to do with the buttons of his shirt, it would be in pulling them out of their holes, not pushing them through.

Quatre looked down. "I guess I forgot. I _was_ thirteen at the time, and a lot began to happen after that. I wasn't even the intended target. Rashid was. I just got in the way."

"So, you literally took a bullet for him. Now I'm beginning to understand why all your Maguanacs would take one for you."

"You mean you didn't already?"

Trowa chuckled. At this proximity, Quatre felt more than heard it, a smile and a low vibration rippling down to Trowa's fingertips. "Good to know you're still well enough for sarcasm." He cocked an eyebrow. "Hungry?"

"Starving. And it's all your fault." Quatre readjusted his sling as Trowa placed one bowl on the counter in front of him. "I hope it's as delicious as it smells."

A shrug. "It's alright."

It was better than alright. Much better. Trowa had put together a gruel of chickpeas, canned tomatoes, and instant rice that reminded Quatre of suppers with the Maguanacs on Earth, sitting around fires while the Milky Way shone bright over their makeshift camp. The dish had everything he needed for a quick recovery, Trowa assured him, even as he ate his own portion as if it were a chore instead of a pleasure. Was it a recipe from his own days as a mercenary, Quatre wondered, an unpleasant memory he nonetheless turned to in a moment of selflessness? Or something he whipped up for Dorothy when she was feeling vegetarian, or let her personal chef go home early?

At that thought, Quatre couldn't keep it to himself any longer. She was, after all, in not so roundabout a way, the reason for this dinner.

"So. Dorothy. How did that happen?"

Trowa looked down, poking around in his bowl as if that could hide his smile. "How did _what _happen?"

"You know. How did you two end up together? I'm curious. If you don't mind me saying, you don't seem like the most likely couple. And you never even mentioned it before a few days ago—"

"That's right," Trowa said as if just remembering. "Because I could have told you the good news in any one of those many phone calls we made to one another in the last three years."

Granted, Quatre should have called like he'd promised he would at Duo's wedding. But couldn't the point be made without sarcasm?

"But in all honesty, there's not much to tell. She's been sponsoring my work with mobile suits for a few years now. We started spending more time together outside of work, and one day we just got to talking. Not about the project for once, but, you know, other things. Politics, philosophy, religion." Quatre had a hard time picturing Trowa discussing religion with anyone, but alright. "Music. It turned out we had a lot more in common than we'd previously thought."

Trowa shrugged. "We just hit it off."

"You just got to talking." That was an even lamer explanation than Quatre had been expecting. There had to be some pieces missing. Even if for some people, Dorothy in particular, a heated discussion was not so different from sex.

"I said there wasn't much to it. If you want some sappy story about eyes meeting across rooms and fated run-ins, you're barking up the wrong tree."

Right. Because Trowa didn't have a romantic bone in his body. Quatre wasn't even sure he wanted the details, but he hated being kept in the dark even more.

Suddenly he didn't have much of an appetite anymore. He must have made a face, because Trowa said, "Everything okay?"

"Just a little sore is all. Everything's great, Trowa, really, this dinner is great, but I think I'm going to be sick if I have to eat another bite."

Trowa nodded. "Why don't you go sit down, and I'll bring over your coffee."

The couch was leagues better than the barstool. Quatre sank down deep into it, letting it cushion his shoulder like a pair of warm hands waiting to catch his fall. A little moan slipped past his larynx. Between that and the darkening gray of the sky outside the tall windows, he could have gone to sleep right there if Trowa had let him, and not wake up for days. His limbs already felt like they had checked out, the second his muscles had the opportunity to relax.

"Anyway, I hope whatever happened between us this morning can be forgiven and forgotten." Trowa handed one of the mugs to Quatre before taking a seat on his other side.

Even so, he didn't quite relax, didn't make himself at home. His posture remained reserved, as if asking for permission.

"No," Quatre said, guessing his train of thought. "What you're hoping for is my blessing."

"Maybe. I don't want you to hold this against me. Or against Dorothy."

"I wouldn't do that. She's a good friend." He hadn't been the most welcoming friend in the world, either, Quatre realized. Starting with his behavior the night they all met at the spaceport club. He was surprised she hadn't approached him about it and asked him to explain himself outright.

"She didn't steal me away from you, Quatre. I think we need to get that straight."

"I know." He threw away the chance to claim that right long ago. "And I don't want to begrudge you any happiness."

"We do make each other rather happy. I guess it's only natural. She kind of reminds me of you."

Quatre paused, the cup almost to his lips. He could feel Trowa's eyes on him, watching for his reaction. Like poking a lab rat, only Trowa's probe was his words, and he knew just where to stick them in to cause the most discomfort.

Then again, maybe he didn't choose his words as carefully as Quatre gave him credit for. He seemed eager enough to put that misstep behind him when he said, "What about you, Quatre? Surely there must have been someone else by now."

He didn't ask like Hilde would have. He asked to put himself at ease. So Quatre wasn't sure if he hated or relished disappointing him. "Here and there. But none of them lasted very long. Maybe my standards are too high."

Trowa smiled at that. He seemed to take it as it was intended: a compliment.

"It's funny," Quatre said. "When my father was my age, he already had several children, most by different wives and mistresses, and didn't show any signs of stopping. And here I am, with absolutely no desire whatsoever to be anyone's husband, let alone a father—all due respect to our friends, of course."

Trowa nodded his agreement. "You don't seem too worried about producing an heir."

"God, no," Quatre laughed. "If it comes to it, some of my sisters have children. I suppose I could always adopt one of them when they're grown, like the Roman emperors did. But kids of my own? I'm having a hard enough time picturing myself president of a colony!"

"That's hard to believe. If anything, I would have said you seemed over-confident."

"Thanks," Quatre grumbled, but it didn't appear to be intended as a dig.

"I know I'd rather have you any day over half of our current civil servants. Well, over most all of them, actually. I may not live in L4, but I've done my homework. Given your abilities, you're the logical choice."

Quatre smiled to himself. That was just what he'd expect someone like Trowa to say. If there was one flaw in his character, one chink in his armor, it was his unwavering trust in Quatre. Had been from the start.

"I don't know about my 'abilities,' as you put it, but it looks like public opinion is with you on that one," Quatre said. "That doesn't reflect much on me, though. I'm a Winner, for one, and second, the office of president in L4 is really more of an economic position than a political one. L4 has always existed to serve mankind. We control a disproportionate share of outer space resources, so, as sovereign as we may be, there have to be checks and balances in place to ensure that power isn't abused. So whoever the president is, he or she is still beholden to the ESUN under the treaty. Not only that, but, even if I do manage to win the public vote, I'll have to appear before the Board and ask their approval to form a cabinet."

"You think they wouldn't give it to you?"

"Difficult to say. It's regarded more or less as a formality. However—"

Even if the Board only rarely acted unanimously against a president, once was more than enough for Quatre's lifetime. He wondered if, if elected, he would be seeking their forgiveness for his father's actions, or they his. Or would pride and past deeds make him the first president elect since the formation of the colony government to not win their approval?

At Trowa's furrowed brow, he explained: "You see, the citizens of L4 are fiercely democratic, but most of them trace their roots back to monarchies in the Middle East. Sultanates and princedoms and the like. They want a strong executive figure—an elected dictator, if you will—but they also want the assurance that they can vote him out of office if they think he's not doing his job."

He must have shown his darker line of thought in his expression, because Trowa sat up a little straighter, and said, "They're not going to do that to you."

"How would you know? You see the future now?"

His rakish smile warmed Quatre like a shot of whiskey. "Give me a little credit, Quatre. I know I'm not Hilde, and I might not be the best at reading the hearts and minds of the people. But I know yours. You won't let what's happened in the past keep you from doing what you know is right. That's the whole reason you decided to run, isn't it?"

"But what if Wufei's right? Maybe it would never have come out that I was a gundam pilot. If I had been smart and kept my mouth shut about the whole thing, none of those old wounds would have had to be reopened. I wouldn't have made people despise me enough to want me dead."

"They would feel that way about the gundams whether they knew you were involved or not. All you did by being honest about the part you played was give them a target for their anger. Even if they had succeeded today, your death would have given them no more solace than if they had just stayed home."

Quatre, for his part, was having a hard time separating the difference.

That wasn't what was troubling Trowa, however. The past few hours with him had lulled Quatre into a sense of security after the events of the day, but even now he showed little concern for anyone's well being but his own.

Now Quatre realized how selfish that had been. His brush with an assassin's bullet wasn't just his own battle. It affected everyone around him—and no doubt he would have some furious messages from Rashid and the rest of the Maguanacs to that effect waiting for him in his inbox. Trowa, on the other hand, was hard-wired to keep his feelings locked away until some safer time when they could be better parceled and dealt with. It was a long-standing issue between them. A defense mechanism that Quatre had trouble breaking through. What served Trowa well as a child soldier in a war of faceless machines was sometimes inappropriate in peacetime.

But just because Trowa couldn't tell him what he was feeling inside was no excuse for Quatre's failure to read it. He used to be more intuitive than this.

"I'm sorry," he said. "I shouldn't have said those things to you this morning. It was wrong of me, and I hurt you—"

"But you were right," Trowa said. "I'm not cut out for the public life. I'm not like you, Quatre. I listen to you talk about politics in your home colony, and all I can think is, if in half a century the history books say I was some sort of humanitarian for the things I did, it would be a lie. I just don't care like you do—or like Relena, or even Dorothy. No matter how much I try to make myself, I just can't."

"Care about what?"

"People. People in general. To tell the truth, I'm not doing this for the good of mankind, or any of that bullshit we said last night. Mankind," he scoffed at the word, "has had its chance to learn from its mistakes, and what happens? Barely twelve years later and we're trying to assassinate our leaders all over again."

It wasn't his choice of words that shocked Quatre so much as their abject cynicism. "You can't actually believe that. I know you, Trowa. I know you're a better person than you give yourself credit for."

Trowa shook his head, looking away.

"You've always done your best to try and make me feel that way. But the fact is, when the chance came to be a gundam pilot, I jumped at it because I thought that was the surest route possible to a quick death. All I had to do was carry out my orders, and if I got myself killed in the meantime—well, I wasn't about to complain. I didn't care about who I might be hurting, because I didn't expect to be around long enough to have to deal with the fallout.

"Then I met you, and Cathrine, and Heero, and suddenly I had a reason—an obligation—to stay alive. That's the only reason I'm doing what I'm doing now. Because I have an obligation to the people I love to stay alive, and building mobile suits again was the only way I could see of doing that.

"But when those men attacked you today—when I had that piece of shit in my sights, and I saw in his eyes how much he wanted to hurt you for what we did, for what _both of us_ did— And when you stood there and _empathized_ with him, while he had a gun to your head— I couldn't do that." Trowa blinked, as if he couldn't even picture it. "I couldn't do what you did. I just wanted to kill him. I wanted to kill all of them myself. Because I can't stand the thought that people like them are still out there, that they'll always be out there, and I couldn't catch them all if I tried. There's not a damn thing I can do about it, and that's what I hate about this most of all."

Not that his instinct to kill came back at the drop of a hat, or that he had successfully fought it off. "I almost lost you today—twice—" Trowa squeezed his eyes shut. But to banish the thought, or hold on to it? "And to think the last words I said to you—"

"It's okay, though. I'm still here, and all's forgiven. If you'll forgive _me_ for being a stubborn ass, that is."

"Quatre, I—"

"I'm going to get you a refill."

Quatre had to get out of there, had to keep Trowa from saying the words he knew were coming. Or perhaps to stop himself from hearing them. To hear them now, after all this time, especially now that Trowa was engaged— It would just be unnecessarily cruel. For both of them.

Knowing he was Trowa's reason for living, even after all this time, was one responsibility Quatre wasn't sure he could handle. Not right then. Not ever.

He knew Trowa was following him. The coffee pot in Quatre's hand was little more than a pretense between them as he turned to face Trowa, and he didn't argue when Trowa lifted it from his grip and set it aside.

His hands were warm from the pot as he took Quatre's face between them. His breathing, hard enough Quatre could hear him exhale through his nose. His eyes never left Quatre's mouth. Caught between Trowa's hands and the counter, Quatre couldn't break away from him this time, couldn't run, and he wasn't sure he wanted to. He knew what was coming, and all the pain that would follow, dredged up like Zero from the lake bed of their souls.

And yet he chose to surrender to the urgent press of Trowa's lips against his.


	7. Chapter 7

If Quatre were quite honest, he didn't want to fight. Not this. Neither could he have denied that he'd tried to replicate that first fleeting feeling of Trowa's lips on his, the special shape and weight and taste of him, with every single short-lived partner that had come along since then, both women and men. Grasping at the similarities, filling in the gaps, but always left unsatisfied.

If someone had asked him to make a list of all the reasons he had made the trip to this colony, _this _would not have made it, let alone crossed his mind, cast off long ago as an impossibility. He couldn't have imagined four days ago that it would be the only thing he wanted out of the experience. Election back home, new mobile suits for the colonies, simply being in the good graces of the people—he could fail to attain any one of those and not feel terribly put out, as long as he still had Trowa here with him.

Kissing him like this, like nothing at all had changed. Like he always should have been.

Quatre broke for a breath, a little gasp of air all he managed to get before Trowa tilted his head, and fitted their lips more perfectly together. His fingertips caught in the slight curls at the base of Quatre's skull. His dark lashes made cresent shadows on his cheeks in the dim lighting. He was beautiful.

He always had been. From the moment they first met, Quatre had felt that on a certain level. More intrinsic than aesthetic. Just as he had felt from a distance that Trowa would be safe. Though he had had no idea at the time how much so.

Quatre felt that again now, like could stay there forever, trapped securely between the kitchenette counter and Trowa's familiar weight. He only wished he didn't have one arm in a damned sling, keeping them from meeting completely.

He let his eyes drift closed, but he could see Trowa behind them. The way he snatched his breath against Quatre's lips when Quatre wrapped an arm around his shoulder, his own hands drifting lower. Not content to rest on Quatre's hips for long, slipping under the tails of his shirt, restless against his bare skin. Their touch, at once heavy and questioning, so uniquely Trowa, sent a shiver down Quatre's spine. Trowa didn't need to speak, didn't need to explain; his body did it for him: the possessive press of his hands, his hips, the steady gallop of his heart.

His fingers unwittingly found the small, dimpled scar Quatre had barely given a thought since it healed over, more than twelve years ago. The spot where Dorothy's sabre had run him clean through in the last days of the first Eve War.

_Dorothy._ Her name hit him like a cold splash of water. Quatre started.

Trowa must not have made the connection, because his question was genuine: "What's wrong?"

"Everything" would have been a good start. "We shouldn't be doing this."

"Why not? Wufei won't be here to collect you for a while. We have time." Trowa's voice slurred to a murmur as he leaned in again, palm cupping Quatre's jaw so tenderly Quatre was tempted to melt right back in. "You have no idea how long I've waited to do this. Are you really going to tell me you don't want it too?"

That Quatre couldn't do. It would be an awful lie, if he said he hadn't been imagining this moment for well over a decade.

"Trowa." His name was a groan as Quatre forced himself to push Trowa away. "You're engaged."

For a moment, Trowa just blinked, and Quatre could swear he almost saw the proverbial wheels turning behind his green eyes. "So?"

"_So_, Trowa? So it's not to me. Think about Dorothy."

"Okay. What about Dorothy? I don't see her here, so I don't see how any of this concerns her—"

"Sure it doesn't." Quatre snorted. "And what are you going to tell her when she asks how your dinner went? Are you going to _lie_ to her?"

He didn't like the way Trowa hardened. He turned his eyes away, but unlike in the past, Trowa couldn't hide behind his hair anymore. His irritation was plain to see. "I don't intend to tell her anything. This is between you and me, Quatre. No one else." He narrowed his eyes at Quatre. "What are _you_ going to tell her?"

Not the plain-spoken truth. That was one thing Quatre couldn't bring himself to do. And not because he feared Dorothy's retaliation. No, he knew he wouldn't be able to do it because, not for the first time in their friendship, he found himself empathizing with her all too easily.

Quatre sighed and launched himself away from the counter. He was careless in doing so, and bumped his left arm against Trowa in the process. Pain from his bullet wound shot through him, but he silently gritted his teeth against it. Only when he was past Trowa and out of the confines of the kitchen did he turn.

"I'm not going to tell her I kissed you, that's for sure. Dorothy's like a sister to me. I don't want to hurt her over something as juvenile as this when it can easily be resolved right here and now."

"Neither do I," Trowa said.

Relief and disappointment both flooding him, Quatre smiled. "Good. Then we're in agreement, and we can start forgetting this ever happened."

"I'm sorry. I can't agree to that."

Of course not, Quatre thought. That would be too easy.

"I want what we could have had," Trowa said, taking a step toward him. "I was wrong to walk away that time. I realize that now. I should have gone after you, instead of just telling myself it was over. But it's not too late for us. Not while we're still alive."

"In other words, we wouldn't be here if no one had made an attempt on my life today. Is that what you're saying?"

"I'm saying I want to give us that second chance I always should have," Trowa said, but he didn't deny Quatre's accusation either. He reached out one hand for Quatre's arm, and Quatre couldn't bring himself to pull away from it. "We can work something out. Not even your staff will have to know what's really going on. If you come onboard the mobile suit project, even just as a consultant, we'll be spending a lot of time together. It's the perfect cover."

So perfect, Quatre couldn't have pictured it all those years ago. It would be easy for outside observers to chalk up long stays in seclusion to brainstorming sessions, or shared professional interests. At very least, they could point to their shared history. There was something idyllic about the notion. Quatre was tempted to give in.

But it was a fantasy. And would remain so if for one reason.

"Do you mean you would call off your engagement? To be with me?"

It was a question that had to be asked. If he were to consider Trowa's proposal seriously, the words needed to be said.

Only, as soon as they were out of Quatre's mouth, he wished he could take them back. Rewind to the beginning of this conversation and steer it in another direction. Because no matter what it was, he didn't want to hear the answer.

He wished he didn't have to see Trowa's hesitation, the uncharacteristically perplexed look that fell over his features, he who was so unused to being backed into a corner. There was no right answer to this one; even the sheer act of hesitation was a kind of failure, even if it wasn't Quatre that he had failed.

"I made a commitment to Dorothy," Trowa said—more to himself, it seemed, than to Quatre. "I can't just break it off. But that doesn't change how I feel. Why do you have to make this so black-and-white, Quatre? I don't see why I can't have both of you."

"But don't you see the situation that leaves me in? Put yourself in Dorothy's shoes. If she cheated on you with me, how would _you _feel?"

That was a ridiculous thing to say. Look who I'm talking to, Quatre reminded himself. As long as they had reasons for doing what they did, Trowa wouldn't be able to fault them. He would be all too willing to understand. He was incapable of anything else.

Quatre did pull himself away then. "I can't do this," he said, forcing a laugh he didn't at all feel. "I can't have this conversation with you, Trowa. Not as long as you seem to think I'm going to jump at the chance to be your 'other woman'."

To the very woman who nearly ended his life years ago, of all people. On top of everything else, there was that knowledge to twist the knife in deeper, that Trowa would be marrying the person who gave Quatre that scar. And Quatre couldn't even say he held it against either one of them anymore.

"That's not what I meant—"

"Good. Because it isn't going to happen," Quatre said in a small voice. "It's never going to happen. The sooner you accept that, and move on, the better for all of us."

A damned hypocrite. That's what Quatre was. And he waited for Trowa to tell him so, to point out just how well Quatre had shown his ability to move on in the days since they met on the colony.

Whatever was on the tip of his tongue, though, Quatre would never hear it. Thinking better of whatever he was about to say, Trowa clenched his jaw hard and looked away.

"You should go," Quatre said. Now, before I change my mind. "It was good of you to take care of me, but what I really need right now is some rest."

What he needed now, he hoped his tone of forced civility conveyed, was a friend, and not a confession. The present, and not the past. Quatre could see words left unspoken trying to escape Trowa's lips, and just prayed he knew better than to let them out. He just prayed Trowa could see how it would wound him even worse than what he'd already suffered today if he had to hear, once and for all, how little Trowa's feelings had changed.

He must have noticed, because Trowa turned without another word, took his jacket from where he had left it, and left. The hotel room door closed hard whether he had meant to slam it or not, but it was the hurt in Trowa's eyes Quatre glimpsed before he disappeared behind it that stung like a slap.

In the quiet that remained, Quatre sank back onto the couch. Rest was the farthest thing from him. The black television screen beckoned like a masochistic dare, but the thought of turning it on, of being confronted with his own brush with death all over again, was too much. It only made his stomach turn.

Outside, as if sharing his train of thought, the rain began to fall in the colony once again. As he sat watching it, running over tonight's conversation in his mind for where he let it go wrong, it was impossible for him not to be reminded of another night that sounded just like this one, and a sky the same gloomy shade of gray.

A night on Earth, ten years ago, and his younger self, standing in the middle of an empty street, standing in the rain, waiting for what he knew he had already thrown away.

Or, perhaps, waiting for the downpour to come and wash him away.

-o-

It was his fault from the beginning.

If he had never heard about the circus's extended stay in that particular city on Earth, if he had never gotten it in his head to take a year at the local branch of his university, they could have avoided this pain altogether.

But there he was, standing by the lion cages, waiting for someone to go find Trowa, tell him an old friend was here to see him. Heart inexplicably starting to race when Trowa appeared, pleased but hardly surprised to see it was Quatre. "I thought you were working on your master's in the colonies."

"They're allowing me to take credits here for a few semesters," Quatre explained. "I heard your circus was in town and thought maybe we could spend some time together while we're both in the area. We haven't really gotten much of a chance since. . . ."

Trowa nodded. He didn't need reminding either, that the last time they'd actually spoken face to face was after destroying their respective gundams, more than a year ago.

"If you're interested," Quatre said when Trowa said nothing else, digging into his pocket, "here's where I'll be staying. You're welcome to drop by when you have some free time."

Trowa unfolded the little packet of paper Quatre handed to him. He must have recognized the address written on it, because he raised an eyebrow. "Slumming it, Quatre?"

"Believe it or not, the details of my inheritance are still in litigation. Fortunately, there's some affordable housing near campus."

But that wasn't what had Trowa's attention. It was the item enclosed in the little packet of paper. He looked up. "This is a key."

"It's a spare." Quatre knew that wasn't what Trowa really meant. "After all we've been through," he said, "I feel like we're family. Of a sort. My house is your house, as they say. I thought it would be nice to get to know one another in a . . . a different capacity."

He didn't give a second thought to his choice of words, and how they might have been interpreted, until much later—until after they had already spent a few months passing by one another in Quatre's small off-campus apartment, their schedules leaving them little time to actually sit down and talk. Sure, they had Sunday mornings at a cafe around the corner, and once in a while Trowa would—perhaps staving off boredom—track down Quatre after class and just wander around campus with him, content to listen to him wax statistics or business law over lackluster cafeteria food.

But mostly, it seemed, one was coming as the other was going. Or Quatre would return from a study session that lasted late into the night to find Trowa already passed out on the couch. He'd make a promise with himself to be up at the crack of dawn when Trowa usually made ready to go, but would end up sleeping through his alarm or come out of the shower only to find Trowa had slipped out while he was in it.

In reality, they saw enough of each other not to feel like strangers. But in hindsight, it wasn't nearly enough. In hindsight, they wasted so many opportunities. And for that, Quatre bore the brunt of the blame.

-o-

"What's this?"

Quatre looked over. Trowa had apparently found the brochure. The logo of his university in the colonies printed large on the front flap, there could be no mistake what it was doing there, and whom it was intended for. Maybe it hadn't been as subtle a hint as it had seemed in Quatre's mind.

"Just an idea I was playing with. Neither of us are going to be here much longer. We're going to go our separate ways and who knows when we'll be able to meet again. I just thought, maybe, when I return to the colonies . . ." He shrugged. "Maybe you could come with me."

There was a hint of a question mark in that last statement. Quatre couldn't say why it suddenly embarrassed him to say aloud what had felt to him a rock-solid idea over the last few weeks.

Maybe it was the way Trowa so easily shot it down. "But I've made a commitment to Cathrine. You know that, Quatre. Besides, what would I do if I did go with you?"

This was his opportunity. Quatre was determined not to waste it.

"Enroll in my university. Look." He helped himself to the brochure in Trowa's hands. "They offer a lot of top-rated programs. You could study law, or computer science. I hear their astrophysics department is one of the best in the Earth Sphere. Or there's always the MBA program," Quatre added with just a touch of pride. "You're too intelligent to let your talents go to waste in a traveling circus."

At the glare that followed, Quatre backtracked: "Not that they aren't lucky to have you. And I know Cathrine would hate me for stealing you away again. But you were a gundam pilot, Trowa. Do you really think any of us can just be normal?"

"If what I do for the circus counts as 'normal,' anyone would be able to do it." But Trowa's expression softened. "But it _is _a business enterprise of sorts. It's something that I'm good at, and I enjoy doing it. At least for the meantime. I doubt the traditional university setting has anything to offer me, besides a piece of paper proving I know what I already know."

Quatre looked down at the brochure in his hands. "Of course when you put it that way, it does sound like a waste."

Preoccupied feeling sorry for himself, certain that he must have offended Trowa somehow, Quatre didn't immediately notice his friend leaning in his direction. Trowa's arm snaked over the back of the sofa toward him.

"Don't get me wrong. I'm not dismissing your proposal out of hand. It's just—" Trowa lowered his voice, his breath just stirring the lock of hair over Quatre's ear. "Maybe if you told me your _real_ reason for wanting me to go with you, I'd be a little more motivated to work something out."

Quatre smiled to himself. He turned his head to ask Trowa what he had in mind, but never got the chance to say the words. Before he could open his mouth, Trowa was pressing a gentle kiss to the corner of his lips.

It was so light, so uncharacteristically tender for someone like Trowa, for a split second Quatre swore he was imagining the whole thing. So unexpected, and so unnervingly pleasant a sensation, he didn't know how to react, except to freeze, like a small animal under a predator's gaze.

His might not have been the reaction Trowa was hoping for, but it wasn't exactly unwelcoming either. When Quatre didn't resist, Trowa cupped the back of his neck and leaned in further, this time to capture more than just a corner of Quatre's mouth.

The taste of the coffee they'd been sharing was heavy on him. Quatre remembered that much. And something unique to Trowa that didn't bring to mind the crates and cages of a circus at all. Something that brought him right back to the war, to close quarters they had shared in space and the few and far-between moments when he had felt entirely at ease. The easy silence between them when they were the last two to leave _Peacemillion_'s tiny mess. Feeling at once weightless and enveloped, by the vessel or the second skin of their astrosuits, or simply the other's company. Always a hint of electricity in the recycled air.

Closing his eyes, the gentle pressure of Trowa's lips sparking against his, Quatre felt that weightlessness again. Even with all of the Earth pulling at him, his stomach climbed up into his chest in defiance, and his heart into his throat. He couldn't remember when he had last known this kind of thrill, nor this kind of terror. Like a drug he hadn't been aware he still craved until now. And just as addictive, if he let himself give in to it.

At the barest, warm touch of his hand on Quatre's thigh, Quatre came back to himself with a start. He pushed them both away. "What are you doing?"

His voice didn't sound like his own. Cold, uncertain, and not at all in control.

Trowa acted as if he hadn't noticed. He backed off a bit, but his green eyes were still dark under his lashes—he'd always had girlishly long lashes, and attractive ones at that—still focused a few centimeters below Quatre's gaze. His words were still low, heavy, possessing of a gravity that should have been reserved for Quatre's most shameful dreams. "Was I too forward? I'm sorry, but I just got tired of waiting for you to make the first move."

When he scooted himself closer again, Quatre leaped to his feet. What he wanted? "Where did you get the idea this is what I wanted?"

"Was I wrong?"

"Well—yes!"

Trowa's gaze did harden then. Like coming out of a trance. "But you gave me your key. You asked me to go back to the colonies with you. What was I supposed to think you were asking for?"

"How about the pleasure of your company? I wanted you to feel welcome at my place. And now I want what's best for your future career. I don't know what I did to make you think I wanted . . . that!"

"Then what was all that about getting to know one another in a 'different capacity'?"

Now that he said it that way, Quatre kicked himself for not seeing the obvious. He groaned at himself. "That wasn't what I meant."

He'd meant they should become better friends, put their past as comrades-in-arms behind them and build a peacetime relationship. He'd never entertained any idea that their friendship should become anything other than platonic.

But an explanation wouldn't come as easily as he thought it would. It never had been easy for Quatre to lie to himself. He certainly couldn't do it now. Even if it was impossible to believe the alternative. He couldn't be attracted to Trowa—and he told him so.

"But _I_ am."

Quatre shook his head. He didn't want to hear it. "You shouldn't be. It isn't right."

"Why? Because we fought together? Or because I'm a guy?"

"Because I'm a Winner!" Wasn't that obvious? "Do you have any idea what kind of expectations are placed on me, Trowa? I can't afford to get involved with someone like you. You have it easy. You're not out there in the public arena—not as someone people depend on, anyway. But I have a reputation to maintain. I'm supposed to take over my family's resource satellites someday. How can I expect anyone to take me seriously if the two of us are . . . are . . ."

Quatre couldn't bring himself to finish that thought. He could still feel an echo of Trowa's mouth on his, like a slight burn, persistent, and the implications of it, the barest thought of where that kiss might have led if he'd let it, opened up a world of fear and uncertainty. He was barely eighteen, halfway toward an MBA and constantly in and out of talks with his family's lawyers, or colony representatives eager to make good use of the Winner name and resources. He hadn't had time for a relationship of any kind—not since the few months he and Heero spent in an otherwise all-girl school during the war, and then he had been too preoccupied to take more than a curious bemusement from his classmates' interest.

His thoughts had inevitably returned to Trowa in those days as well. Time and time again. Even when everyone around him was so sure Trowa had survived his suit's explosion and drifting through space, Quatre had been unable to escape his guilt. The what-ifs and uncertainty of those days haunted him with the knowledge of everything he could have so effortlessly destroyed.

Even if his hope had faltered then, one thing Quatre never gave up his faith in was Trowa's humanity, even when he buried it deep inside himself. They'd always had a deep connection, too strong to end during the war—too strong to end with it.

So why had it taken Quatre so long to see it? Why had he been so blind to where these last few months together were heading?

Or had he just been fooling himself, seeing only what he wanted to?

Apparently, Quatre had said the wrong thing. Whatever warmth for him had been in Trowa's eyes a minute ago was long gone now. "So, it's not that you aren't attracted to me. You're ashamed of what others will think of you."

He had a way of making the issue sound so uncomplicated. "You wouldn't understand, Trowa. Just because the people in L4 are fairly progressive, doesn't mean they don't have certain expectations for their leaders. And if I want to be one of them in the future—"

"Then you can't have feelings for me, is that it? You can't be seen with someone like me—some uneducated, nameless clown for a lover—"

"I never wanted it to be like that in the first place."

"Then what am I wasting my time here for?"

Quatre knew what this was. He could tell by the sudden chill in Trowa's voice that he had offended him, deeply. And yet what Trowa was giving him was a choice. A test, one that he could easily pass. If he only wanted to.

Instead, Quatre grabbed for his coat. He started tugging on his shoes.

Trowa unfolded himself from the couch. "Where are you going?"

"There's a call I have to make," Quatre lied. "Something my lawyers wanted to discuss. I forgot to mention it before."

"And you can't just take it here like every other time?"

Trowa knew it was a ruse; Quatre could see that. But he wouldn't call Quatre out on it. "I need somewhere where I can think clearly—without any distractions."

He didn't say when he would be back. There was no time for that. He had to put some distance between the two of them—and fast. Before he lost control in front of Trowa and—well, he didn't know what he might do, or say for that matter, except that he would probably regret it. He felt like he might throw up, but that was the least of his concerns. No matter what Quatre might have said to explain himself, Trowa would not have understood.

He would have seen through every weak excuse, because even Quatre couldn't make himself believe them as he ran through them in his head.

He really did have a phone call to make, once he was outside and alone. To his airline, booking the next shuttle flight back to the colonies.

Not even a conception yet in his mind of the rainy night to come.

-o-

The knock on the door startled Quatre from a deep sleep he wasn't aware he had slipped into.

For a moment, still lost in his past, Quatre mistook it for thunder. But, with no compensatory benefits to speak of, lightning was too dangerous a phenomenon to try to replicate within a colony.

With muscles still only half awake, and feeling a hundred years older, Quatre pushed himself to his feet. Something told him it was Wufei before he opened the door.

His weariness must have shown on his face, because old comrade's stony facade faltered when he got a good look at Quatre. "Are you ready to go?"

Quatre's few bags were packed and waiting in the bedroom, his laptop case waiting on the barstool nearest the door. Trowa had done so much for him in the brief time he'd been here: cooked him dinner, changed his bandages, and finished what of the packing Quatre's injury had left him unable to.

And what had Quatre shown him in return? Mixed signals, and the door out. After that chilly exit—Trowa's silence had been even worse than any parting shot—what was it going to take to patch them back up again?

At his slow nod, Wufei said, "How are you holding up?"

Quatre couldn't fault him if a lack of concern showed through in his manner. He and Wufei had always had something of a distant relationship. That didn't mean Wufei didn't genuinely care. In his own way. "As well as can be expected, I guess. My shoulder hurts like hell."

"Does it feel hot?"

When Quatre told him it didn't really, Wufei was visibly relieved. "Then you'll be fine. We really should get going. We've got a secure suite set up for you a few blocks over. Sakamoto and I will take you there personally, while my agents follow with the rest of your things," he explained to Quatre's questioning look. Wufei picked up the computer case himself and gestured for Quatre to follow him.

For a split second, Quatre was tempted to ask him about Trowa. The two must have touched base at some point before Wufei came up.

But he thought better of it, and kept mum.


	8. Chapter 8

Sakamoto was waiting beside the car. It was already running. The same smile he'd greeted Quatre with the past three days was back, as though nothing out of the ordinary had happened. As though Quatre hadn't had an attempt made on his life, and as though he, Sakamoto, hadn't been aware it was coming all along.

He touched the brim of his hat. "Mr. Winner."

Quatre was too tired to simply go along with it. He dug in his heels. "I'm not getting in that car."

The smile fell from Sakamoto's face. Wufei said, "Yes, you are. Maybe I didn't make myself clear enough earlier—"

"You've made yourself perfectly clear, Wufei. Maybe _I_ should rephrase: I can't in good faith get in a car with a driver who's relationship to me has been fraudulent from the beginning. How can I trust him to get me anywhere safe if he can't even be honest with me about who he is, and what he's really doing here?"

Wufei made a sound as if to protest, but Sakamoto's sigh stopped him.

"You're right, Mr. Winner," he said to Quatre. "If I were you, sir, I probably wouldn't trust me either. So, what can I do to restore your trust in me?"

Quatre blinked. That was remarkably understanding. And just what he wanted to hear. "I want to know what your involvement is with the Preventers—"

"Quatre, some of that information may be classified—"

"And I want to know why, if you two were on such good terms, you ever left my father's service. Why you weren't there when he needed you most."

For a long moment, Sakamoto did not answer him. He stood staring at Quatre—or, more precisely, through him—with a sobriety that fit his features so well, it must have been what molded them into their current state over the years. The cheer he'd exhibited over the last few days now seemed an act in comparison.

Finally, he opened the car door for Quatre. When Quatre made no move to get in, Sakamoto said, "I'll answer any question you have to the best of my ability, Mr. Winner, but not out here. _Please. _Get in the car."

This time Quatre did as he was asked, Wufei sliding in beside him. When Sakamoto was comfortable in the driver's seat, he met Quatre's eyes in the rearview mirror.

"As you know already, I was once your father's chauffeur. What I neglected to tell you when we met a few days ago, was that, back then, I was more than just a chauffeur. I was also your father's bodyguard. And yours, Mr. Winner."

Quatre's pulse quickened. He'd suspected that was the case, ever since it had been revealed to him in the hospital that that was Sakamoto's true purpose here. "Then that's why Rashid contacted you. He knew about your connection to my family."

"It was Agent Chang who tracked me down, actually." His eyes flickered to Wufei's in the mirror as he drove, even if Wufei did not acknowledge them in return. "Mr. Kurama simply vouched for my past service. Your father left no record of my whereabouts once my employment with him was _officially_ terminated, to protect all parties involved. He didn't take into account your memory of me, of course, but you couldn't have been more than five years old when I left. We didn't think you would remember my face, let alone my name."

And they assumed correctly. "Then, why did you leave my father's service?"

"Nothing happened, if that's what you were wondering." The windshield wipers' beating filled the space for a pause while Sakamoto pondered the best way to put it. "He asked me to. Your father thought my particular skill set could serve him better in a different capacity. As a spy."

"My father had a spy?" Quatre couldn't help a laugh. The idea was preposterous.

Though he seemed to be the only body in the car who thought so.

"Of course," said Sakamoto. "It was only the natural course of action to take. As I'm sure you're well aware, your father had many rivals, in both the business and political sphere. Some were more . . . vocal than others about their wishes to bring what they saw as the Winner hegemony down a notch or two. So he asked me to keep an eye on them. I'm sure I wasn't the only spy he had in his pocket."

"So, after his death, that was when you joined the Preventers."

Wufei snorted at that, taking Quatre aback. "Agent Sakamoto's been with the Preventer organization a bit longer than that. You might even say we Preventers joined _him_."

Catching Quatre's puzzled look, Sakamoto explained: "The Preventers as you know them today are not the bureau's first incarnation. Some manifestation of it was already in the works before the Eve Wars. Certain leaders from the Colonies and Earth began laying the foundation in secret while the UESA was in power. They envisioned an autonomous, apolitical peace-keeping organization that would act in the interest of the entire Earth Sphere. Something that Heero Yuy would have approved of, had he lived to see it. Of course, back then we had a different name for it. But the gist was the same."

"The former Vice Foreign Minister Darlian was involved," said Wufei, "as were the Peacecrafts, Noventas and Weridges."

"Idealists, all of them," Sakamoto said with a shake of his head neither approving nor disapproving. More like reverent. "And your father was one of them, Mr. Winner. He was the project's greatest advocate in space."

Quatre sat back in his seat, words escaping him. He was aware of his father's more public accomplishments—the media was quick to remind its viewers how Quatre compared, just in case he ever forgot—but this was news. So Zayeed Winner was one of the Preventers' founders; and this man who was taking Quatre to his new accommodations, this man who used to bring him candy and greet him with a smile, once upon a time, one of its original agents. Quatre wasn't sure whether to be proud of that fact, or offended that no one thought that information was something he needed to know.

But no one had lied to him, either, he reminded himself. They'd simply neglected to tell him just what his father had been involved in. And in the meantime, allowed Quatre to continue resenting the man for his distance, without offering the understanding that might finally lay his guilt to rest.

"Please don't blame him for not telling you, sir," Sakamoto said, sensing Quatre's mood from his silence. "He had an obligation to keep it secret. If it was ever made plain to the general assembly of the Alliance what he was up to—"

"There would have been hell to pay. I know."

Quatre turned his gaze to the dark, drenched streets outside the window. Could that be why, when Quatre went home during the war, he found OZ's representatives already in the colony? After all, at least one of the members of Romefeller had been complicit in his father's project. Had Tuberov and his allies caught wind of the truth, and used it as a pretense to seize the resource satellites for their own gain?

But if that were the case, surely Quatre would have known about it in the months that followed. No, he couldn't blame the Preventers for his father's death any more than he could realistically blame himself.

"He was a hero to a lot of us," said Sakamoto. "I don't want you to think I left your father's side because I didn't want to be there. I would have done anything for him. That's why I took this job. He would never forgive me if I let anything happen to his boy."

-o-

There was an e-mail waiting for him from Rashid.

And one from Auda to inform Quatre he and Abdul were on their way to C-421. Quatre almost yelled his protest back at the screen. But neither that, nor a message back telling them not to bother would change his old friends' flight plan; he knew they would only be satisfied when they saw Quatre in one piece with their own eyes.

It was flattering, the way they looked out for him even as a grown man, but also a little embarrassing. He valued their loyalty, and their friendship, and only hoped they wouldn't prove just another distraction he couldn't afford on this trip.

In addition to several messages from his secretary, an e-mail from Relena awaited him, though Quatre wasn't sure why he was so surprised to see it. Perhaps because it already felt like ages since they'd seen each other at the gala the night before.

"I just heard what happened, Quatre."

She appeared to have sneaked away in the middle of a conference. Someone else was speaking in the background, and her voice was somewhat muffled as the mic tried to filter it out from the rest of the noise.

"Dorothy tells me you're safe, and that you weren't seriously injured. I can't tell you how relieved I was to hear that."

For that, it appeared Quatre owed Dorothy another debt of gratitude. While he was cut off from the rest of the colony in his hospital room, and then with Trowa in his hotel suite, he had given little thought to reaching out and reassuring his friends of his situation. Thankfully, someone had thought to do it for him.

"But it chills me to know there were those in this colony who would wish you harm so much as to take deadly action, and that they could have been allowed to get so far before they were caught. It's just another reminder that our work is never done—yours least of all. You've had an uphill battle all along, convincing the Earth Sphere that you would be a suitable leader with your history. For that, I can't say I envy you, Quatre."

She must have caught herself in foreign minister mode, for she shook herself a little, her hair bobbing against her chin.

"I'm sorry. What I mean to say is, I sympathize," she said in a softer voice, one he hardly recognized these days from all their official meetings together. "More than that. I know what it feels like to have someone want you dead, and I just want you to know . . . I'm here if you need me. Whatever you need, just ask. I'm pulling for you, Quatre, and I know Dorothy is, too."

Dorothy again. Something inside Quatre sank to hear her mentioned so casually in Relena's mail. Whatever they appeared to be in public, she was still a close friend and colleague, who continued to support him even when he wasn't around to witness it.

And he returned the favor by molesting her fiancé. Was that something one could even make up to another person? And was there a way to do it without admitting what he and Trowa had done?

To get his thoughts on a different track, Quatre settled down to return his secretary's calls. She was still awake, doubtless hopped up on caffeine just to hear back from him, but Quatre knew it was useless to apologize for keeping her up. This wasn't the first time she'd forgone sleep for him without his asking, for far less dire matters than an attempted assassination.

And all things considered, he found he craved her unwavering optimism more than ever at the moment.

"I know it's short notice," she said, only after several assurances about his health, "but the colony officials asked if you would be willing to speak at a press conference to address this attempt on your life."

"So soon, huh." That wasn't so surprising, though. "Shouldn't they have contacted me directly about this?"

"I've had your calls and messages rerouted to your office back here, sir. I thought it best if we handled the first wave of questions while you recovered." And from all the way in L4. Quatre was impressed. This warranted a serious end-of-year bonus. "It sounds like the main motive for calling the conference is to avoid bad press for the colony and put the citizens' fears of terrorism to rest. You know, assure them that everything was handled correctly and you received excellent medical attention, that the perpetrators aren't roaming free—that sort of thing." His secretary blinked behind her glasses. "The perpetrators aren't running free, are they?"

Smiling for what felt like the first time in days rather than hours, Quatre assured her they were not. One was dead, and the others securely in he Preventers' custody. "I'm sure they're being interrogated as we speak."

"That's a relief. I hope they tape electrodes to their gonads." The secretary cleared her throat, incredulous herself that she had said such a thing in front of her boss. "Pardon me, sir. What I mean to say is, your staff has been busy back here preparing a press release for your approval, but if you think it's too soon—"

"Not at all. Send it along." He needed a reason to get out of his room in the morning, and back on the right track. "I'm alright talking about my experience. Besides, I wouldn't want the colony citizens to feel like their safety has been compromised on my account."

On the other end of the line, his secretary let out her breath.

"I couldn't agree with you more, sir. And if I may say so—though what happened today was unconscionable, surely you must agree that you _are_ in a unique position because of it. With your injury, your critics won't dare say anything against you for fear of coming off as insensitive. At least for a couple of weeks, anyway. And seeing you on the road to recovery so soon after such a close call should play well in the polls back here as well. Then it won't be just _Today _magazine calling you 'Unbeatable Winner'."

Yes. Quatre truly couldn't wait until the next issue hit the shelves.

-o-

That little nap he'd managed to catch before Wufei arrived to move him seemed to be all the sleep Quatre was going to get that night. It wasn't just the alienness of the new room. After everything, his mind was restless, and his body followed suit. The pain in his shoulder had subsided to a dull throbbing, but it was quite enough to keep him from getting comfortable and drifting off. He didn't even bother trying.

A Preventer agent was there to meet him when he stepped out into the hall. Quatre was aware they were watching him closely, but he didn't think it was close enough to know when he was moving for the door. He and Wufei were going to have to find a definition of "privacy" they could agree on.

"Thought I'd go up to the lounge on the top floor for a little while," Quatre explained with a tired smile he barely felt. "I've got to go somewhere or I'm going to go crazy in there. You know how it is, right?"

The agent concentrated on something in his earpiece. After a moment, he said, "I'll take you."

Quatre stifled his sigh. There wasn't much else he could do, just accept his bronze-and-navy shadow. At least the young man had the courtesy to keep a decent distance when they did arrive at the all-night lounge, leaving Quatre's side for a seat in the corner, and a clearer view of the layout.

A pianist was playing over by the windows. At this ungodly hour of the morning, his songs sounded as exhausted as he must have felt. There were plenty of patrons there still, probably suffering shuttle-lag, but none seemed to be paying much attention to the music.

Quatre took one of the vacant stools at the bar, and ordered a strong cup of coffee.

When it arrived, he just let it sit there. What he had learned only hours ago about his father resurfaced in his mind with a new urgent curiosity, and he took out his mobile. It felt strange to run a search on his own father—like he should have known everything there was to know about Zayeed Winner already, and not knowing was a kind of filial failure on his part—but he had to see the truth with his own eyes. Were the facts as classified as Sakamoto implied, or was Quatre really the last person to know these things?

He paused on an image of Zayeed: an official photograph, showing him shaking hands with some politician or business man Quatre didn't recognize—it was long enough ago the man must have retired from public life, if he was still alive. His father was young. Quatre barely recognized him without the mustache he'd known since his earliest memories. He was surprised. There was something about Zayeed in that picture that reminded him of Trowa. Even more to remind him of his own image on the cover of that damned magazine.

That wasn't what was so disconcerting, though. It was like seeing a superhero without his mask: the myth, stripped away, and finding in its place a regular human being just as flawed and fragile as everyone else.

"Your father?"

Quatre looked up, surprised to see it was Relena who had asked. He hadn't noticed her approach. But he couldn't say he didn't welcome the company.

Quatre smiled to himself. "I look that much like him, huh?"

"I recognized the picture." But she didn't exactly refute Quatre's claim, either. "Fancy meeting you here. I thought you were staying at the, ah—"

"I was, but Wufei thought it best to move me here." He hadn't bothered to mention this was Relena's hotel when he made the switch. "At least they have a lounge open all night."

"That _is_ a plus." Relena touched the stem of her wine glass with a sigh, but stopped short of picking it up and taking a sip. From what Quatre knew, like himself, she wasn't much of a drinker. "I tend toward insomnia myself when I travel. Which is what I'm usually doing. But you'd be amazed how much work you can get done when everyone else is asleep," Relena jested, with a nod toward the portfolio that sat on the bar next to her drink. "So. What about you?"

Quatre shrugged. "I just couldn't drift off. Too much on my mind."

"I'd say that's an understatement." He didn't need to go into further details; Relena took one look at his arm in its sling and already understood. "I meant, how you are holding up?"

"I'm on the mend," Quatre said. Physically, at least. "I got your message."

"You did? I'm sorry about that."

"Why would you be sorry?"

"I'm afraid I didn't make myself as clear as I wanted to," Relena said, a faint color spreading to her cheeks. "It's surprisingly difficult to find the right words to say to someone who narrowly escaped assassination."

"Well, it's not as though they make a card for that sort of thing."

He might have been trying to make her feel better, but Relena looked shocked that he would even suggest it. "I'm serious, Quatre! Fine. If you want the truth, I was scared to death when I heard the news. After all the trouble I went chasing after as a girl, it only frightens me when one of my friends is in danger."

Quatre nodded, lowering his eyes. If Trowa had been there, he would have added a variation of "told you so" of his own. "It's always different when it happens to someone else, someone you know. It didn't really sink in for me what a close call that was until I left the hospital."

He left out any mention of the incident in the parking garage. If Relena hadn't already heard, then he didn't want to worry her any more. Besides, the memory came with a touch of shame now, after his conversation with Trowa. It wasn't just this trip. For a while now, Quatre had been too imprudent, too focused on getting things done to worry about his health or critics.

But hadn't that too been a kind of selfishness? He told _Today _that he could accomplish nothing dead, advice it was time he followed.

"Is that why you have the photograph up?"

Quatre had forgotten about his mobile. He might have been embarrassed by his answer, if it weren't Relena sitting beside him at the bar. "Honestly? It's like his ghost has been following me around these last few days. I see him staring back at me from the newsstands. Everything I do is compared to him. Would he have done it differently? Done it better? The only thing anyone seems to agree on is that, whether you saw him as a great man or a tyrant, I still have a long way to go before I begin to measure up."

He cleared his throat. Relena or not, it was still an awkward subject for Quatre. "I don't actually carry pictures of him around with me, so I have to look him up on the Net to remember what he looked like. Is that strange?"

"I don't think that's strange at all."

Quatre wondered if she did the same for her late father—her adopted father, he reminded himself, as the old Vice Foreign Minister had been—or if she kept so many photographs of him she never had to run a search just to see his face.

"I met him once, you know," Relena said. "A long time ago. I was too young to remember it well."

"Really?" Quatre didn't know why, but that surprised him. "Did we meet?"

"I think so. I met a lot of boys and girls around that time, when Father was constantly shuttling between Earth and the Colonies. My playmates for a day, he would call them. He wouldn't take me with him all the time, but I would whine and beg him. I hated being left behind." She smiled fondly, for a moment a million miles away, and twenty years past. "I'm pretty sure I remember you. Just barely. You cried and called me bossy."

Quatre laughed. "That sounds like me."

"I don't even remember what I did to make you say that. I just remember my feelings being hurt."

"Don't worry about it. Knowing me, you probably didn't do much. I was something of a spoiled child."

"I guess that's another thing we had in common then." Relena tossed her head, an uncharacteristically girlish gesture that Quatre chalked up to the time, or the half-empty wine glass beside her on the bar. "It seems we both expend too much of our energy trying to fit into our fathers' gigantic shoes."

"Can you blame us? We had so many expectations pushed on us at a young age. Comes with the pedigree. The war only made it worse. Me with my teenage rebellion as a gundam pilot, and you—well, you were queen of the Earth Sphere—"

Relena snorted. "For what? A whole week?"

"I'm sure it was longer than that. My point is, we never had a proper childhood, you and I. I don't know if the history books are going to say the war made us stronger, or better, but it really doesn't feel like it sometimes. At least where I'm concerned. When I look back at all we accomplished during that time—everything we tried to do, and even where we failed—"

"I think I know what you mean," Relena said, "and I think a shrink would tell us it's only natural. I mean, I've _always _felt old. I haven't even reached thirty yet, and I still have a long career ahead of me, God willing, but—"

"Sometimes you wonder if it's all downhill from here?"

"And yet, the older I get, the less mature I feel. Wouldn't you think it would be the other way around?"

Quatre smiled. "But you have to remember, those were days when actions really did speak louder than words. If you'll pardon the platitude. It almost seemed easier, looking back, to change the world from the cockpit of a mobile suit. These days, there's too much talk to keep us from getting things done."

"Quatre Winner, do I hear you saying you'd rather go back to fighting out your differences than have a rational, civilized debate?"

Coming from Relena, it couldn't be a more rhetorical question, but Quatre found himself coloring from it nonetheless. "I'm just saying it was a lot less complicated, is all. You had a clear winner: the one who survived. These days, when politicians reach a stalemate, they throw up their hands and say 'Well, we gave it our best,' and we're right back where we started. Veterans can't get their pensions, new resources sit in litigation for years, and colonies that the growing population desperately needs drift out there in space, unfinished, because some elected official's afraid of a little bad press. That's not progress."

"But you're not going to be like that."

The utter confidence in Relena's tone of voice took Quatre momentarily aback. He could only blink, at a loss for words, to which Relena smiled knowingly.

And changed the subject.

"You know, you sound like my brother when you say things like that," she said, turning back to the bar but watching him from the corner of her eye. "I hear the same complaints in his messages. 'Why don't the fat cats get off their lazy bums and _do _something with the peace they've been handed?' Which is why he's there and not here. At least the terraforming project gives him something to do with himself_. _If he weren't able to make actual, measurable progress there—I don't know what he'd do."

"Are you saying I would do better on Mars? With Zechs Merquise?" The idea that she would find enough commonality between the two of them was disturbing enough to Quatre. Although, he had to admit, his view of the man was probably a little skewed.

Relena laughed at that, a rich, clear sound when it was allowed to come out, and not stay hidden behind a demure chuckle.

"No," she decided, "I think you've got enough on your plate to keep you occupied for the foreseeable future, between your impending presidency and Trowa and Dorothy's mobile suit project. _If _it ever gets off the ground, that is."

"If the museum opening's success is any indication, it sure looks as though the Colonies' interest has been piqued." About her other prediction, Quatre wasn't eager to make any comment.

"I'm sure it is. But that doesn't mean we're to the point as a species where we can use mobile suits again without turning them into weapons. Of course the Colonies would love to be the first to jump on Dorothy's bandwagon, after how they were treated most of the last century. But that's no excuse for her to take advantage of their enthusiasm. I'm still not entirely convinced she isn't just parading your friend Trowa around as her own personal gundam pilot."

"Trust me. There's a little more to it than that."

"I don't mean to belittle his character, Quatre," she was quick to add. "It's just that, we've both known Dorothy for a long time, and we know what she is—and isn't—above when she's determined to have her way. Which is why this project is really straining our friendship at the moment. I can't help the feeling that she's been wording things specifically to bait me in the press."

That was one anxiety Quatre couldn't confidently lay to rest. He remembered, fondly more often than not, how the two young women were one another's most vehement opponent from the very beginning of their friendship.

"God!" Relena colored. "That sounds awfully selfish of me now that I think about it. Why am I even talking your ear off about this? After the day you've had—"

"It's alright," Quatre told her, chuckling. "Believe me. I'd rather talk about this than what happened to me."

He hadn't had a chance to talk about the MS project in any depth with anyone since the gala night. Anyone but Trowa, that is, and that had turned out to be a disaster—twice. A chance to discuss the finer points of that evening, and the controversy, with someone like Relena was just what Quatre needed to take his mind off the events of the day and the ache in his shoulder. Already he felt reinvigorated, and he'd barely touched his coffee.


	9. Chapter 9

His secretary might have wanted him to milk his injury for all it was worth, but Quatre decided to appear at the press conference the next morning without the sling. Though he _was_ a fast healer, more than that he'd always felt awkward receiving others' sympathy, too proud to want anyone to think he deserved to be treated with kid gloves just because of his lineage. Perhaps it came with being the only boy of thirty children.

In any case, like his secretary had predicted, the colony officials and most of the local journalists and business representatives were primarily concerned with maintaining C-421's public image.

The rest, unfortunately, had shown up to the hotel ballroom to eat Quatre alive.

"What, if anything, has changed in your campaign strategy since the events of yesterday morning?"

"You've been rather vocal about your preference for invisible security when you travel. Can we expect to see you with a larger personal security force from now on?"

"Has the attempt on your life caused you to reevaluate your stance on renewed mobile suit production? Don't you think your support for the Catalonia Group's proposal is sending the wrong message so soon after your admitting to being a gundam pilot in the Eve Wars?"

"Do you expect your opponents to use this as fodder against you in the polls? Surely you must agree that it would be easy for them to say that your being targeted for assassination would make your presidency—if you were to be elected—L4's most unstable presidency in years."

"How _did _you know to dodge the shot? Are you aware that there are some in the online community postulating you knew about a coming attack? Or even that you orchestrated it for your own political gain? How do you respond to these allegations?"

How could he? Who would honestly believe that he would have himself shot just for a few more votes? Some of the questions were simply ridiculous, but Quatre couldn't afford _not_ to answer them with the same calm and reason as the legitimate ones, even if they were based on misinformation, speculation, or blatant lies.

"What can you tell us about the men behind the attack? Who are they? And, more importantly, have they all been apprehended?"

"Since the investigation is ongoing, we can't release all the details at this time," Wufei, seated at the table beside Quatre, answered for him; and Quatre was perfectly content to let him. In fact, it seemed as though he was fielding a round half of the questions so far, even some of the ones that didn't pertain to his area of expertise. "What I can say is that the men involved were not citizens of C-421. It appears they came here for the express purpose of taking out their sole target, that being Quatre Raberba Winner."

"Then, you might say they were terrorists with a conscience."

Quatre recognized the man who had spoken as a brash reporter from Colony News Network, one who styled himself as an antagonist of both sides of the aisle more than he reported any actual news.

And it worked. Wufei seemed to take the comment as a personal offense. As aloof as he pretended to be, and even after all these years, an attack on one of the five gundam pilots was still an attack on them all. "No, I would not say that. These men were cold-hearted assassins. They did not care if innocent bystanders were caught in the crossfire as long as they hit their mark. That they did not, and that there were no other injuries, was thanks only to Mr. Winner's quick thinking, and to our agents' efforts to uncover the terror plot before the first shot could even be fired."

"So, the Preventers knew about the plot before it was carried out."

"That is how we were able to react so quickly and shut down the operation."

"But those men were still allowed into the colony. They were still able to get unnoticed into a hospital parking garage, _and_ Veinte Memorial Park—of all places—and fire into a crowd of innocent people."

"And how that happened will surely be picked apart in excruciating detail in the weeks to come," Quatre was quick to say before Wufei's patience could run out. "What's important right now is that the men responsible have been detained. We can only hope to learn from this experience so that in the future, when citizens are angry with their leaders, they take up pens instead of arms to express their frustrations. In this new era of peace, as stable as that peace may seem right now, we cannot afford another Heero Yuy."

That proved to be the wrong choice of words. A few in the audience seemed to think that Quatre meant to compare _himself_ and his accomplishments with the martyred leader of the Colonies. So much for his secretary's prediction that the press would be sympathetic.

"Really, I don't see what all the upset is about. The late Heero Yuy is a more than fitting comparison for Mr. Winner to make. After all, I ask you, what single Colony leader has done more to broker peace in the past decade than Quatre Raberba Winner? I, for one, can't think of a single one."

Just when Quatre thought this press conference couldn't go any further south, Dorothy Catalonia materialized out of the crowd. In her posh designer clothes and looking like she was heading to a social luncheon, she stood out easily among the suits and cargo vests of the journalists. Quatre caught murmurs from around the ballroom as to what she was doing there, and couldn't very well ask her to sit back down with the whole colony watching.

So he decided to play along. And hope she didn't say anything too damning. "You have a question, Miss Catalonia?"

"Mine isn't a question so much as it is an observation," she said, a crooked finger to her chin in a thoughtful pose he didn't buy for a single second. "The tragedy of your situation, Mr. Winner, reminds me that once upon a time, and not unlike yourself, there was a colony caught between a rock and a hard place."

The crowd settled down, only the click of laptop keys or a muffled cough daring to interrupt her, and she placed a hand dramatically to her breast. They knew as well as she did what was coming.

"Why, it must have been twelve, not quite thirteen years ago now. Two super powers were vying for supremacy in space, and the loser, grasping at one last, desperate effort for survival, took the colony hostage. While its citizens had one gun to their heads, the other power was preparing to fire another. Neither side particularly cared what became of the colony trapped in the middle, so long as their side scored the winning blow."

There it was. The event toward the close of the first Eve War that nearly wiped Colony C-421 from existence—and the one event the media had spent the last few days since the opening of the mobile suit exhibit jumping through hoops not to mention.

"Are you saying we're Winner's White Fang in this analogy?" one of the reporters asked Dorothy.

The rebel organization's name was still a point of bitter division within the Colonies themselves, to say nothing of the Colonies and Earth. But both those who refused to see the White Fang as anything but liberators and those to whom they were a point of shame and embarrassment could condemn certain actions taken by the battleship Libra under the rebels' control. Naturally, Dorothy's audacity to make such a comparison was bound to rile more than a few in the crowd.

And while the cameras were turned for the moment on her, Quatre could only stare. Narrowly escaping terrorists bent on revenge only to be crucified in the press—was that the accusation she had come here to make?

Dorothy laughed at that. "Why? Does the shoe fit?"

The reporter who had asked the question stammered, unwilling to cast himself or his fellow journalists in such a light.

"Take what lesson from history you will, but remember this." Dorothy pointed to the podium, straight at Quatre. "It was only through the actions of that man sitting there that any of us can be gathered here, in this colony, today. It was a gundam pilot who saved you and your way of life. You must never forget that."

Beside Quatre, Wufei hummed in amusement. He hadn't been a part of the operation to liberate C-421 from OZ, his own suit undergoing repairs at the time. Maybe he found it as curious as Quatre did that she would praise the gundam pilots' deeds that day when she had been on Libra herself.

Or else he simply saw some gem of merit in Dorothy's approach that Quatre did not.

"I'm afraid Miss Catalonia is leading you on this trip down memory lane unnecessarily," Quatre said into his microphone, dismissing her gesture with an easy chuckle. "I didn't call this conference to talk about my campaign, or my past as a gundam pilot—"

"On the contrary, Mr. Winner," said Dorothy, "I would argue your history as a gundam pilot is precisely the reason we're here. It is precisely the reason you were attacked in the park the other day, is it not, and it is precisely the reason the terror ring that plotted your assassination wanted you dead."

She certainly didn't sugarcoat it. And the press loved her for it.

"The subject did come up." Exactly as the mastermind had said in the hospital garage: He was targeted for his crimes. He was guilty simply for what he had been.

"Then if you will allow me, Mr. Winner, all I am trying to do is simply put things into perspective for these fine people. After all, you were accused of committing crimes against humanity. I would answer those charges by reminding all Colony citizens exactly what the gundams did _for _them, without asking anything in return."

"I would appreciate it if you didn't glorify my actions during the war."

Dorothy was unfazed by his interruption. "Why not? You do take credit for them, do you not?"

"Of course I do." For good or evil, Quatre had come to accept his role in those confusing times long ago. "But a soldier in battle should never make decisions for the accolades. We gundam pilots were no different. We did what we had to to protect the citizens of the Colonies—and the citizens of the Earth as well. We put our lives on the line, and we were ready, each one of us, to give that life so no one else would have to. That's the only reason I ever fought."

"Even though it went against your own belief in total pacifism—an ideal espoused by your very own father? An ideal, may I remind you, that he gave his life to protect?"

"Not at all. I fought because somebody had to. Because the peace he believed in had to be won back, and I couldn't sit back and hope it would happen all on its own. That is why I used the gundam. I knew that if I wanted to make that peace a reality, I had to fight for it myself.

"I almost lost my life yesterday. And, yes, for what I went through as a gundam pilot, by rights I should have died a dozen times over. But something, either God or Fate, or maybe just plain dumb luck, has kept me alive this long. I don't believe in Hell; but I have to believe that if there's some cosmic force of justice in the universe, it wouldn't let me rest until it was done with me. It would want me, and all of us gundam pilots, to pay for our sins while we're still alive, with whatever power and in whatever capacity we can. That's all I'm trying to do. That's all I've been doing these last twelve years.

"And if people like the men who attacked me yesterday can't see that, I understand. I understand why they would hate me enough to want me dead. I can never give them back what they lost. But give me some time, and I can help build a world where no one else will have to suffer what they did. Now, if you think that's naïve or passe of me, or somehow at odds with a belief that mankind can achieve absolute peace, so be it. But that _is _what I believe, and it will never change.

"Now, does that answer your question?"

A triumphant smile stretched Dorothy's lips, and now Quatre saw that the trap of hers he had fallen into was no trap at all.

"Thank you, Mr. Winner," she said. "I do believe that answers it quite sufficiently."

Amazingly, whatever her goal had been, it seemed to have succeeded. The other reporters' questions were no less pointed after that, but the atmosphere in the hotel ballroom did change. As did Quatre's reservations about answering. One thing he could say for Dorothy: Next to her, all other opponents didn't seem quite so tough.

"As a keeper of the peace and a bureaucrat," she said as she approached him after the conference, "Mr. Chang's by-the-book approach may play well in Brussels, but he has a thing or two to learn about giving the citizenry what they really need to hear."

Quatre smiled. Thankfully, Wufei was too preoccupied to be within earshot of the comment. Though watching the two of them parry insults was truly a sight to behold. "Was _that_ what you were doing out there? Refreshing his memory?"

"And yours." Dorothy tossed the thick braid of her hair over her shoulder. "Someone had to reign the rabble back in. You two certainly weren't doing it. Asking if you orchestrated the whole affair. . . . Who do they take you for? Me?"

"And you didn't even use the platform to push your pet project."

"My dear Quatre, not everything is about me. I merely came here to show some support for a friend in need."

The way Dorothy cocked her hip and the careful enunciation of her words, she seemed as sly and serpentine as she did when Quatre first met her. A young, Machiavellian Dorothy whose vocabulary did not include "altruism." "If that's what you call a show of support, I'm glad I'm not one of your enemies."

Dorothy waved off the slight. Knowing her, she was more likely to take it as a compliment. "But there's no need to thank me. After our little performance out there, the press will be content to see me as the villain, leaving you free to soak up their undying affection and sympathy. History may even see your speech today as the turning point in your presidential race. Now, in light of that, wouldn't you agree I did you a favor?"

She and his secretary both. Though Quatre still wasn't as convinced sympathy was what he truly wanted from the people. Maybe understanding was just a little too much to expect.

However, the tough questions did need to be asked. Just because he was injured in a botched assassination did not excuse Quatre from answering them. He supposed, if he had to choose, he minded less if it was Dorothy doing the asking. He was used to their tête-à-têtes turning into heated debates, so what difference did it make if they aired their philosophical differences in public?

Still, "Is that all you came here for?" Quatre asked. "To make me look better?"

"Can't take a good deed at face value, can you, Quatre?" But she already knew the answer to that: Not when it came from her. "As a matter of fact, no. Trowa told me what happened after you two left us yesterday. But obviously you know that by now."

Quatre's heart jumped into his throat. So Trowa had mentioned it after all, after he said he wouldn't speak a word. Now it made sense, why Dorothy would come here to mock-attack him in front of the colony. Nor could he blame her for wanting revenge.

"He made it sound like you two had everything under control, of course, but I've learned to read between the lines where that boy's concerned. And the more over-confident he talks, the more transparent he really is. You'd think he'd know better by now, that I like my facts straight, no sugar."

Quatre breathed a mental sigh of relief at that. She couldn't be talking about what he'd feared. And, though she kept up an unmoved facade, her sudden unwillingness to meet his eyes confirmed it.

"I could have lost both of you yesterday, and not even known it until it was too late. To think, I was making girl talk with Hilde Maxwell while you two were down there in that garage, right beneath our feet, fighting for your lives."

She scowled, the very notion repulsing her. Though Quatre wasn't sure if it was only that she had used the phrase "girl talk" in serious conversation.

Feeling like he had just dodged another bullet, Quatre didn't know quite what to say.

He settled for, "How is he?"

Dorothy crossed her arms. "He didn't return from your dinner last night in the best of moods, if that's what you're asking. I was hoping you two might use the opportunity to remove whatever sticks you've had up your respective butts since yesterday morning and sort out your differences once and for all. For all our sakes."

But thankfully, she didn't ask him the reason for said "sticks"—as she had so ineloquently put it. Trowa had come through on one count, at least.

"But from what I understand, as soon as the two of you fix one misunderstanding, two more pop up in its place."

Quatre winced at that. "I guess that's as good a way to put it as any."

"I can't for the life of me imagine what could be so difficult. Relena and I have overcome differences many would say were completely irreconcilable, and our friendship is stronger than ever."

From last night's conversation with Relena, though, Quatre might have said differently. Of course, the face one showed one's friend and what one said about them in other company were two separate matters. But he and Trowa had always had a unique relationship. Unless Relena and Dorothy had dabbled in some girlhood fling he wasn't aware of, he very much doubted either of them would truly understand what he and Trowa were going through.

"To tell the truth," Dorothy said, as if reading his thoughts, "I'm a bit jealous of the two of you."

That took Quatre by surprise. Not so much that she might have guessed the reason for the closeness between them on her own, but because it wasn't like Dorothy to be so frank about what most would consider to be an unflattering trait in themselves.

"I mean it," she said to Quatre's expression. "He and I don't have the history that you two do. In fact, the first time we met was as enemies. I didn't exactly make a good first impression, trying to kill you and all."

He knew to what she referred instantly. Though what transpired in that dark control room inside Libra was hazy now after more than twelve years. "Dorothy, that was a long time ago."

"Of course. You're right. And obviously one's feelings for a person can change considerably in that amount of time. But one thing that sticks in my mind as vividly as yesterday is the way he looked at _you_. Nothing he did or said, just the way he _looked _at you. As though it would kill him if anything happened to you.

"I didn't give it any thought at the time, of course," she went on with an assumed nonchalance, "but now that we're engaged to be married, you can't blame me for dwelling on it. I've never had anyone look at me that way, Quatre. As if their life depended on my survival. That's one thing I don't think I'll ever get from him, but you had it without even trying."

And, if Quatre were quite honest, without even knowing what it meant.

He wanted to tell her it wasn't like that, that his and Trowa's camaraderie during the war had been different from how she imagined it. He wanted to assure her that he had been too preoccupied between the pain and getting his suit out of the dying battle station to notice anyone's expression, least of all Trowa's.

But the truth was as plain as she had put it. That was something Quatre figured out long ago. No one ever troubled him more or put him at such ease as Trowa, and he doubted anyone ever would. Though their friendship seemed like more hardship than it was worth these days, they couldn't rightly let it linger on last night's sour note.

And that was enough to set Quatre's mind. "I have to talk to him."

Dorothy blinked. "I'm not so sure that's a good idea. If the mood I left him in was any indication, I don't think he wants to talk to you."

"I don't care if he's _in the mood _or not. I have to see him, Dorothy. You were right: We've got to put this thing between us to rest. I can't just call him up." For one thing, what Quatre had to say had to be said in person. But, "I'm afraid he wouldn't answer."

Dorothy's slow-to-form smile told him that was most likely true. For a moment, Quatre was sure she would bar his way again—as the closest person to Trowa now, she would have every right to, and Quatre would not be able to blame her—but instead, the sly old look returned to her blue eyes.

"You're right," she said. "He probably wouldn't. All the more reason you should take a trip down to the museum. If I remember right, he had some business to take care of there. And why shouldn't you join him? After all, you're both adults, free to travel where you will. If you should happen to run into one another. . . ."

Quatre smiled in gratitude at that. Not that he needed Dorothy's approval, but it was reassuring to have.

-o-

He was standing on the viewing balcony above Zero when Quatre found him. The museum's staff were all too helpful in that regard. They didn't give a request from Quatre Winner a second thought, or stop to wonder if the person he was inquiring after didn't want to see him.

The glass panels in the railing were far removed from the catwalks they'd walked a thousand times, that detail and the softly illuminated display cases around the chamber breaking the illusion of a mobile suit hangar. Otherwise, the concentration in Trowa's green eyes, as if he were communicating telepathically with the gundam in front of him, was like a scene ripped from Quatre's memories.

"I'd almost forgotten that it was this machine that saved the colony from OZ. Is that why you included it in the collection?"

Trowa must have noticed his approach, but he only turned to acknowledge Quatre once he had spoken. And even that was momentary. "This exhibit would have been incomplete without at least one of them. Zero was the only one left. It's just a convenient coincidence."

"Just a coincidence that Heero didn't destroy his gundam, and left us the only one that ever succeeded in becoming a symbol of the Colonies' fight for peace?"

A glance at what was left of the suit, however, showed a different reality. The green glass covering one of Zero's eyes was lost, revealing the cold, unblinking machinery underneath. To Quatre, those eyes had always seemed to possess an uncanny intelligence that should have been absent in any machine. He wondered if it was the same for Heero. Or Trowa, for that matter—though for all his affinity for mobile suits, he probably would have said it was silly to think a hunk of metal and wire could be said to be in any way alive.

"Dorothy reminded me of something today. Maybe you saw her on the news. She was sort of the highlight of my press conference."

"I've been busy." But Trowa didn't exactly deny that he had seen it, either.

"She made it sound as though I had some part in saving this colony, when really it was Zero's doing all along.

"And you were its pilot," Quatre said to Trowa's cool gaze. "You redeemed Zero, Trowa, after all the wrong that I did with it. That's the only reason it can be here, in this place, and there isn't rioting in the streets in protest. Because of you."

It wasn't just Zero he had redeemed either, if Quatre were quite honest. Surely Trowa knew it as well as he did without having to say it. As Quatre had told him before, on top of the hundreds of thousands of lives he saved that day, Trowa saved his soul.

"So I have to wonder," he said, clearing his throat: "Did you really bring Zero here, to C-421, because it was important to the colony? Or because it was important to you?"

"Dorothy told you where I was."

Quatre smiled to himself. "I wasn't going to take no for an answer."

Trowa sighed and looked away at that. Which made the smile infinitely harder to hold on to.

"I'm sorry, Quatre, but I don't want to talk to you right now. I have nothing to say."

"She thought you might say that, too. But I can't just leave us hanging after what happened last night. I can let it go without a fight."

Quatre shook his head. "Poor choice of words. I don't want to fight. That's the last thing I want. But I've got to make this right. And this colony—we both found redemption here thirteen years ago, whether we want to remember or not. Now that we've come back, I can't think of a better place to ask your forgiveness for everything that's happened between us since then. If you'll just let me explain—"

"What is there you can possibly say that's going to make anything better?" Trowa said. "If anyone was in the wrong, it was me. I shouldn't have—"

Suddenly conscious of the museum's quiet, and its visitors, Trowa lowered his voice and turned away from the exhibit floor.

"I shouldn't have kissed you," he admitted. "Someone once told me to act on my emotions—which might have been a good bit of advice, except that somehow, when it comes to you, my emotions always seem to lead me wrong. I thought if I could _show _you how I felt, it would solve everything, but really. . . ." Trowa shook his head. "I was only opening up Pandora's box."

And so what if he was, Quatre wanted to say. In this metaphor, there was always hope.

But was hope really the spirit he wanted to conjure up where the two of them were concerned? It seemed that was what Quatre had been doing his best to crush last night. Even if it still lingered irrationally in the bottom of his heart.

"I know what you mean," he settled for. "Believe me, I feel exactly the same way. But we're both adults. We piloted _those_ things, for God's sake," he said with a nod toward Wing Zero. "I think the least we can do is put our heads together and find a reasonable, civilized way to get past this.

"Which is why I had to come here, and say that I would be happy—no, overjoyed to accept your invitation to come on as a technical consultant. These last few days with you, and Wufei and Duo, have made me realize how much I miss us working together. As a team. L4 shares your dream for the future of mobile suits, and anything I can do to help make that dream a reality—"

"Save me the speech, Quatre. The offer has been revoked."

Quatre started. Yes, he realized, his tone and choice of words just now may have been a bit too presidential to be sincere, and sincerity had been his goal in coming here. But the chill in Trowa's was a hundred times worse. Revoked? Just like that? "I—I don't understand."

"I've come to a realization myself," Trowa said, more to his feet than Quatre himself. "In fact, it was you who led me to it. I was wrong to ask you to participate. Beyond the level of a Colony bureaucrat, that is. As L4's president, you could be our project's best ally, but not if our working together calls your motives into question. You're under enough pressure as it is. I can't in good conscience ask you to jeopardize your chances by working with me, especially in light of what happened yesterday."

"Bullshit." The accusation slipped out before Quatre could censor himself. "You expect me to believe this has anything to do with my campaign? After last night?"

Trowa turned to him.

"Maybe you're right, Quatre. I mean, you practically said it yourself. How can you expect me to work so closely with you and remain faithful to Dorothy? I haven't exactly done a good job of it the last few days. Do you have any idea how hard it's been for me, to be in the same room with you—to have to stand so close, and even be able reach out and touch you?"

Shame heated Quatre's face. There was something about hearing his own arguments in Trowa's cold, even tone that made it so much harder than saying them. Was it because they were true, or because, coming from Trowa, it felt like being damned? Trowa's unreadable stare would not tell him which—wouldn't even tell him if Trowa was being sincere himself of just giving Quatre what Trowa thought he wanted to hear. And Quatre could find no answer for him that wouldn't just make things worse.

"You should go." It was the softest thing Trowa had said to him since he got here. "It looks like Wufei is waiting for you."

He nodded over Quatre's shoulder, indicating and greeting Wufei at the same time. Standing about twenty paces away in his bronze and navy Preventer jacket, Wufei's reason for being there wasn't exactly discrete. He was just the excuse Trowa had obviously been waiting for to cut out.

Quatre refused to let it deter him. "Let him wait. This isn't over between us, Trowa."

"You're right. It ended a long time ago. Maybe if we'd recognized it then, we wouldn't be in this position now. So, if you'll excuse me," Trowa said as he slid by. "I've got a lot to get done before Monday."

"Why Monday? What happens then?"

"I'm leaving the colony." The way Trowa glanced out of the corner of his eye at him, it was like he expected Quatre to have known. "Dorothy and I both. I thought you knew we would only be staying a week. That's all the time her schedule will allow."

No, he hadn't known. No one had bothered to share that bit of information with him. So now they had just two more days in colony together. And who knew when they might see each other again once they'd gone their separate ways.

"At least let's do something before you go—the three of us. What about breakfast tomorrow? For old time's sake," Quatre said to his back, grasping at something, anything to keep Trowa there a little longer.

All in vain. "I can't promise anything," he said over his shoulder. A word to Wufei, and Trowa walked by them without so much as a look back.

A sigh that slipped by Quatre made Wufei turn and regard their departing friend with narrowed eyes. When he turned back, something had changed in his demeanor. An understanding that softened his features, and his tone. "Now I think I get it."

"Get what?"

"I always thought there was something I was missing about you two."

Not liking the knowing tug at the corner of Wufei's lips, Quatre quickly changed the subject. He indicated one of the paper cups in Wufei's hand. "Is that for me?"

"Yeah." Wufei handed it over. "Don't expect much. It's cafeteria coffee." His own had a little tag hanging from it on a string. Even in his stressful career as a Preventer agent in the field, Wufei remained a consummate tea-drinker. Perhaps that sort of attention to ritual was what kept him sane when the world was blowing up around him.

"I'm sorry you have to play babysitter," Quatre said by way of thanks. He tried, but his left arm didn't feel quite ready to raise a full cup without trembling. "I never expected any of this to happen. Someone in your position shouldn't have to lower himself like this, following me around on personal errands and getting my coffee."

Wufei humphed at that. "If you weren't you, I might resent it. But it goes with the territory, keeping you safe. There's no one I trust more than myself to keep my old friend alive. —By the way."

As Quatre cradled the warm cup between his hands, stunned that Wufei had called him "my friend" to his face, Wufei surprised him further by digging into the inside pocket of his jacket. "There's something else."

Whatever Quatre was expecting that something else might be, it wasn't the worn and wrinkled card-sized envelope that Wufei did pull out.

Quatre was almost afraid to look at it. It seemed old, whatever it was. "What is this?"

"A letter. From Heero. He asked me to give it to you."

"Heero?" Quatre's heart leaped. He set aside his troubles with Trowa. The small, light weight of the paper in his hand took on a surreal quality, as if he were holding on to a bit of antimatter that was barely hanging on in their universe, and might implode at any moment. "You've been in contact with him? Where is he?"

"I haven't the faintest idea where he is. He gave that to me in 196. After the revolution."

After Mariemaia's coup d'état was put down. It must have been in the days immediately following the aftermath. It wasn't long after that that the rest of them heard the last message they would ever receive from Heero in the last twelve years. "And you've had it all this time?"

If Wufei were the type, he might have blushed. "I meant to give it to you long ago, but the right moment never came up. Besides." He turned his eyes. "I read it. I know, it's not addressed to me. But, believe it or not, that letter helped me through some rough patches. I was actually a little reluctant to part with it."

In that case. . . . Quatre held the letter back out to him.

"Why don't you keep it."

Wufei blinked. "What?"

"If it means to much to you, you should hold on to it. So much time has passed, I'm sure whatever Heero wanted to convey to me has changed since he wrote it."

Besides which, Quatre wasn't sure he wanted to know what their old, lost comrade had to say to him. He knew Heero was still alive somewhere, making a living for himself on Earth or in the Colonies; but after all the time that had passed, reading the letter now would be akin to reading words from beyond the grave.

He didn't want to admit it, to Wufei least of all, but a part of him feared what Heero had to say would be condemning. Like being sent into battle with a Zero System he desperately wanted to avoid and forget, all over again.

I can't, Heero. Not this, not now. Please, don't make me.

Wufei's eyes narrowed in understanding, but he did not take Quatre's offer. "I promised Heero I would give it to you. I'm not about to break that promise after finally being able to fulfill it.

"Do what you want with it." He shrugged. "Read it if you want, or don't. Destroy it. I don't care. That's your decision now."

* * *

**Notes for those who have not memorized the entire series and/or just completed an epic re-watch:** The events referenced in this chapter are from _Gundam Wing_ episode 43, "Target: Earth." To recap: Treize Faction survivors take colony C-421 hostage, betting the White Fang on Libra won't blow up a bunch of civilians in order to get them (and not knowing Libra's actual target is Earth). Trowa, still suffering amnesia, gets his shot at the Zero System when he takes it out in order to protect Cathrine and the circus. Quatre, not wanting Trowa to make the same mistakes he did, manages to keep him from accidentally destoying the colony, and helps Trowa get his memories back in the process. Then the gundams take back the colony, yay! \:D/ But Earth still goes boom. :(


	10. Chapter 10

"Auda! Abdul! Did you just get in?"

"You were expecting these two?" The stern young Preventer agent who had seen Quatre to the lounge the night before posed the question like a delivery man whose conscience would only be assuaged by an official signature.

Of course, the team assigned to protect him would never have allowed the two Maguanacs to be here if Quatre hadn't informed them of Abdul and Auda's impending arrival already. He couldn't exactly say it was a surprise to see his two old friends, either. He just didn't expect to see them so soon, and waiting for him in his hotel room.

No sooner could Quatre reassure the young agent than Auda seized him up in a great bear hug. Taller though Quatre might have been, Auda had no trouble lifting him a few centimeters off the ground—much to the horror of the Preventers in the room—exclaiming, "Master Quatre! You're alright!"

"Careful, careful, careful!" Abdul warned him, catching Quatre's wince. "And you say _I'm _the clumsy one."

"'Cause I have a jumbo jet with a Leo-sized dent in the side of it that says you are." While Auda muttered a warm apology, giving Quatre's good shoulder a squeeze, Abdul wrapped his arms about Quatre with the kind of strong yet mindful embrace befitting an old explosives expert. "Good to see you in one piece, young master."

"Thank you. Both of you." In their presence, Quatre's soul glowed. As much as he sometimes wished they would stop with that old formality—and as much as they stubbornly refused—the Maguanacs still had the power to make him feel like a member of their family with nothing more than the warmth in their voices. Even if he hadn't come from an artificial womb after all, as they all had, he remained an irreplaceable part of their brotherhood. And these two had made it their duty long ago to make sure Quatre never forgot that.

"But you really shouldn't have bothered," he said. "As I could have called you up to tell you myself—if you'd only waited—I'm _fine. _No need for you two to drop everything going on in your lives just to see _me_."

Abdul sobered. "Fine? You call what those terrorists did to you _fine_?"

"It was all over the news," Auda explained while his friend fumed. "The stations wouldn't play anything else. I'm telling ya, they were going on like it wasn't just you who had dodged a bullet. Rashid was furious. He said if that Sakamoto fellow had just done his job like he was supposed to—"

Abdul made a noise to silence him. Apparently Quatre wasn't supposed to know about his driver's true purpose there.

"It's okay," he told them. "I already know all about Mr. Sakamoto."

Abdul and Auda visibly deflated at that, one more weight lifted off their shoulders.

"Which leads me to ask, why wouldn't Rashid want me to be fully informed about my own staff?" Quatre crossed his arms over his chest, to the best of his ability. Now it was coming back to him, why he had dreaded the duo's arrival. "I'm not a child. Doesn't he get that? I have every right to know if he's hired a Preventer to watch over me."

Auda shrugged. "What can I say, Quatre? You know the last thing Rashid would want to do is dishonor your wishes. But you refused to travel with a security detail. What were we supposed to do, huh?"

"We all know how much you value your independence, but first and foremost we want you to be safe," Abdul agreed. He glared at Quatre over the top of his dark glasses. "You are safe, right? Sakamoto at least knows how to sweep a vehicle for explosives?"

Quatre chuckled at that. "I'm sure he does."

But the two had a point. As did Rashid. Though his old friend was at his back, Quatre could all but see the satisfied smirk on Wufei's lips. I'm sure he's just dying to rub it in, Quatre thought.

He spread his hands. "Alright. You all win. I was wrong to insist on traveling alone when there was a threat out there on my life. Happy?"

Wufei couldn't keep silent anymore. "It's a start," he said as he crossed the room.

Quatre ignored him. "And I'll listen to you guys from now on when you say I need better security." He could promise that much, even if he didn't always take their advice.

"That's more like it. But just remember, Master Quatre, you were just as lucky out there as you were good—if not more so," Auda scolded him. "Lucky to be surrounded by people who could take good care of you when it happened."

"You act like this is the first time I've been shot." But Quatre wasn't about to argue with Auda's point. It was true. He was fortunate to be among friends when the would-be assassins made their move. Even if one of those friends was currently not speaking to him.

Which he wouldn't mention to Abdul and Auda if he could help it. The last people he wanted to bring into an argument between himself and Trowa were the Maguanacs.

"Well," Quatre said, "now that you're here and have assured yourselves that I'm still alive, what do you two plan to do?"

One look between then was enough to show the two Maguanacs hadn't given the idea much thought. "Master Quatre," Abdul said, raising a suspicious eyebrow at him, "you're not trying to get rid of us already. We just got here!"

"My point exactly. I know how long the flight is from the L4 cluster, and I know what it takes out of you. Where did you book your room?"

And awkward cough indicated to Quatre that a room had yet to be booked. Abdul admitted, "We didn't quite get that far."

Quatre managed to stifle a laugh. Really, it was just like them to forget something so crucial.

"Let's see if we can't get you accommodations here," he said. "And then, will you two do me a favor and take a little time for yourselves? We can catch up properly over dinner. There's a Middle Eastern place I've passed several times already that I'm curious to try."

"I'll see about getting a private room," Wufei offered, and stepped away, one hand to his ear.

He ushered his reluctant young agent away with him.

Quatre let out a sigh, taking in the sight of his two old friends—who were more like older brothers or young uncles to him, to be honest. Always there when he needed them, even when he was too proud to ask. Despite all of his grumbling, he was more thankful for their sacrifices than he could ever express. "It really is good to see both of you."

-o-

It felt good to sit back and listen to someone else talk about their life for once. A couple of hours spent hearing about Abdul and Auda's wives and kids over good food that reminded them of home worked like an eraser taken to the chalkboard of Quatre's mind.

Though it served as yet another reminder that his busy campaign schedule left him little time to see his extended family who were the Maguanacs. Those of them who hadn't taken up positions in the company, that is. Those who had settled down and moved to other colonies, even if they were still in the same cluster. Things might be different once this race was over, however it turned out, and he might have the time to begin to make up for his absences, but Quatre knew better than to fool himself with false hopes.

This must be how Father felt, he mused, as he shrugged out of his damp coat.

And started, surprised by his own revelation.

Why he should be surprised, he couldn't say. As a young boy, he'd looked up to no one as much as his father; and as a teenager, swore up and down that Zayeed Winner was the last man whose footsteps he would strive to follow in. Yet that was exactly what he had done, of his own volition as much as necessity. Taking up the mantle of leadership because someone needed to, and he had the means and the will and the Winner name to do it himself. He wouldn't say he was particularly ambitious. But had his father been any different?

Quatre couldn't say that either. He only knew the Winner name was a heavy one to bear, and the only reason he didn't usually feel the full brunt of that weight was that he'd been acclimating himself to it since childhood.

Suddenly he was aware of the letter from Heero in his pocket. Not once had it been very far from his person since that afternoon, and the more Quatre wondered what could be in it, the more hesitant he was to open it.

But he couldn't very well dispose of the thing, either, despite how easy Wufei had made the notion sound. That letter had traveled twelve years to reach him, and not reading seemed like it would be a disservice to Heero. He understood how Wufei had felt, at least, all that time his promise had gone unfulfilled.

So he _would _read it, Quatre told himself. Eventually. He owed that much to Heero. Just so long as it didn't have to be now.

He didn't have the time to give it a second thought, in any case, when his mobile rang.

It was the young Preventer agent. "Sorry if I disturbed you, sir, but I thought you might want to know Foreign Minister Darlian is approaching your door. Would you like me to escort her away?"

Quatre had to smile. That was something he'd like to see tried, just for Relena's reaction. One way or another, the young man was taking his duties far too seriously. Though Quatre was beginning to suspect it was not out of resentment for being assigned guard duty, as he'd first thought, and more out of admiration. Maybe for himself, but more likely than not for Wufei.

"That's alright," Quatre demurred, wondering how Relena would react if she knew her element of surprise had been blown. "Thank you, but I think I can handle her myself."

He had a vague idea what she wanted, and the notion wasn't undesirable to him. Though he had a busy day starting early the next morning—several interviews scheduled at different locations around the colony—he really didn't feel like turning in any time soon.

Relena seemed startled when he opened the door not seconds after her knock. But only for a split second, her surprise quickly replaced with a rakish smile that made Quatre wonder if she'd already gotten a head start on him.

"Miss Darlian. Are you here to ask me out?"

"Hmm, I _was _wondering if you'd like to join me for a nightcap upstairs." She matched his conspiratorial sarcasm pound for pound; and when she drew the _Today _magazine from behind her back and waved it next to her ear, he understood the reason for it. "The new issue hit the stands today. I thought you might want to see what they said about you in the letters to the editor. Maybe with someone else along to bitch about them to?"

Quatre had nearly forgotten. It was going to be nice not being watched by a dozen copies of his face whenever he walked by a newsstand. And those letters regarding his interview were sure to have been sent before he was shot.

He had to laugh at her foresight. Just another thing the two of them had in common. Neither could escape the urge to know what others were saying about them, no matter how abysmal it was. If they ever took themselves too seriously for that, then God help the Earth Sphere United Nation.

-o-

At least the first interview was at a radio station. It hardly mattered how he looked or whether the little bit of sleep he'd been able to get after that late night in the hotel lounge showed on his face.

A quick breakfast with Abdul and Auda followed, allowing Quatre to add something substantial to the tall cup of coffee he'd nursed all morning.

Then it was off to the colony administration complex, where they set him up in a staged room and sent one major television news reporter after another in to ask him the same general series of questions. At least it gave him a break from rushing around for a few hours, the dialog was civil, and there were no surprises. When all was said and done and it was off to the next photo opportunity with a local representative, Quatre could confidently say everything went rather well.

Not that he didn't collapse on the sofa like a petulant child when he finally made it back to his room.

"You'll see it all on the evening news," he mumbled into the big couch pillow, waving off answering the Maguanacs' question as to how his day went. Reluctantly, he remembered his manners and sat up. "How was yours? Did you make it down to the museum like you planned?"

Abdul and Auda had expressed their eagerness to see the new exhibit the night before, when Quatre assured them what Trowa had done with the donated mobile suits—allowing visitors a hands-on experience with their old modified Tragoses—was brilliant. But he would much rather hear their reaction himself.

To say they were proud of the display was an understatement. Neither one of them particularly missed the action since the wars ended, but they were mobile suit pilots through and through. They appreciated the abilities and limitations of the machines, as well as all they symbolized for the people in whose place they'd fought, even if only for a brief window of time. If Trowa had misrepresented them in any way, Quatre would have heard about it.

Instead, the technical details they raved about were overwhelmingly positive. "That fellow of yours really outdid himself this time," Auda said.

At Quatre's slow blink, Abdul started out of his own monologue. "Wait. What do you mean, 'that fellow of yours'?"

"Not whatever _you _were thinking. I'm just saying, Trowa's done so much for Master Quatre over the years, he might as well be an honorary Maguanac. Why, what did you think I said?"

As the two went back and forth in that vein, Quatre stifled a laugh. They kidded him about his relationship with his old friend, but if they knew the truth about him and Trowa, they would lose the nerve to joke about it. Though Quatre was sure they would be fully supportive of his side.

Too much so, come to think of it. That was the problem. He didn't want them angry with Trowa for his sake. Not when they'd just come back from his exhibit with glowing reviews.

A knock at the door cut the two's bickering short. "I hope you don't mind," Quatre said as he got up to answer it. "I invited some company."

"Quatre! It's been too long, man."

"It's only been two days," Quatre said as Duo stepped into the room, grocery bags in his hand that were spotted from the drizzle. "Oh, Duo. You guys didn't have to bring anything. I thought we would just order up from the kitchen."

"I know. But we figured you'd be getting tired of room service by now." And then Duo was gone, jumping forward to shake hands with Abdul and Auda. Quatre couldn't remember the last time they saw each other, but the Maguanacs always did have a bit of a soft spot for Duo. Fellow orphans, even those of their own making, had to stick together.

"It's just some beer and sandwiches we picked up from the kosher deli," Hilde said, reaching up to exchange a brief, gentle hug with Quatre. "How are you holding up?"

"Much better." After all the times he'd been asked that in the last few days, and all the various people who'd asked it, his answer never felt as easy and genuine as when he was giving it to friends.

But he was still eager to change the subject. "Here. Come on in. I can't remember, Hilde: Did you ever meet Abdul and Auda?"

"I think we did," Auda said. "On MO-II, after that last battle. Master Quatre was in for a patching up, too."

"That's right. I knew I remembered you two from somewhere," said Hilde. "Wow. Was it really that long ago?"

"We heard you and Mr. Deathscythe here got hitched," said Abdul. "And about time, too. Our congratulations are long overdue."

Quatre shot Hilde a guilty look. So now they knew he talked about them to his other friends. He wondered if Duo was the same with his coworkers, or if he and Hilde had a different code of honor where their old war acquaintances were concerned. Especially when one of them was as prominent as Quatre Winner.

Or maybe it was just the passage of time that made the atmosphere in the room suddenly feel as stifling as a shrunken sweater.

Duo being Duo, however, if he noticed any awkwardness at all, it only made him that much more determined to shrug it off. "Thank you, fellas. But I'm afraid you're congratulating history. We've got bigger news than that to share with ya.

"We're having a baby!" he blurted before Hilde could get in a word. "Can you believe that? _Me_, raising a little brat of my own?"

The news worked more beautifully than Quatre could have dreamed. Auda and Abdul never wasted any opportunity to tell another interested soul all about their own burgeoning families, and certainly not when they could compare notes and pictures with new—or soon-to-be new—parents.

For a couple of men devoted to a brotherhood of test tube babies, who once swore allegiance to their makeshift family as though they had no parents—and still dropped everything to come to Quatre's aid—the two had somehow transformed into proud husbands and fathers in the past ten years. Though their own children were gestated in artificial wombs, if anything, their own upbringing made them more determined to make sure their children grew up without the stigma they suffered.

Quatre could see the same traits in Duo, as well. His old friend remained modest in company about his ability to be an adequate father, but Quatre saw right through it. As immature as Duo might perpetually act, in many ways, underneath it all, he seemed more mature than Quatre felt.

A kid on the way will do that to you, he told himself, but that couldn't be the whole story. He looked at Duo and Hilde, or Wufei with his devotion to his career, even Trowa and Dorothy—though God forbid, the last thing he could see them doing was having children of their own—and he thought of what he had lamented to Relena the other night.

All his old comrades, his long-time friends, were moving on with their lives. Hitting milestones that were appropriate for adults their age to hit, and slowly but surely putting the troubles of the war and their parts in it behind them.

And here he was, a whole colony cluster practically laid in his lap, and he felt stuck. Trapped in the past as the universe turned around him.

Where did he make a wrong turn when everyone else went right? For that matter, was theirs the kind of life he really wanted for himself? And if not, why did he envy them _so much_?

This wasn't working. He'd asked Duo over so he might free his mind for a few hours, drown his worries in friendly conversation, and instead they were coming back with a vengeance. Excusing himself for a glass of water, Quatre headed for what little escape the kitchenette could offer him.

He'd just turned back around, full glass in hand, when Duo came over to join him.

"So, what's up?"

Quatre blinked at him. He kept the patient smile on his lips, though he was sure by now Duo had see right through it. "What do you mean?"

Duo sighed and rolled his eyes. Yep, Quatre was that transparent after all. "I don't mind you asking me and Hil here to play distraction for you and your friends for a while," he said in a low voice so the other three, laughing away, wouldn't hear. "But you're not as good an actor as you think you are. Not to be brutal or anything, but you aren't."

Quatre let the smile fall at that. No use keeping it up. "I'm sorry, Duo. I didn't mean to use you two like that."

"_That _part's no problem. Abdul and Auda're good people, and it's been way too long. Besides, they're giving us some _great_ free advice." He leaned a hand on the counter, and Quatre wondered if Duo meant to block his way, or it just worked out that way. "Right now, though, I'm more worried about my old friend. So what is it, Quatre? The press hasn't exactly been fair to you lately."

"They've been fair enough," Quatre said. It wasn't nearly as bad as what made it to the broadcast made it look.

"Then what? You and Trowa get in a fight?"

Quatre didn't need to answer. The look on his face apparently said enough. And Duo looked like he wanted to swallow his tongue. Which led Quatre to wonder how much he really knew. "Oh. Sorry, man. I wasn't actually serious—"

"Don't worry about it," Quatre cut him off. "I know I'm making a bigger deal out of things than they rightly deserve. The last thing I want to do is drag someone else into our mess."

As understanding as Duo was, Quatre couldn't do that to him. He had to fight his own battles. Just as he'd been doing since the day he stole Sandrock and went to Earth. This wasn't the first time he'd felt like all his troubles were joining forces to create the perfect storm. He would weather this just like anything else.

"I do appreciate your looking out for me, though." He sighed. "To be honest, I envy you and Hilde. You've got your nice, quiet careers, and no one cares whether you were mobile suit pilots on this side or that, or whether you're scheming against the Earth Sphere as we speak. Or a dozen other ridiculous things. You could just take off and disappear if you wanted to. And even then, you're lucky you've got each other to fall back on, and a family on the way." Whereas Quatre had thrown away his best chance at that kind of happiness. "You have it easy."

"_Easy?_"

Quatre looked up at the defensive tone of Duo's voice. That wasn't the part he'd thought his friend would take issue with.

"What part of what we've been through do you think is easy?" Duo muttered. "We've had our rough patches just like anyone else, Quatre. A family, huh? You any idea how hard it was for us to conceive? How long we tried? We've been trying to get pregnant a helluva lot longer than we've thought about being married. Did you know that? We didn't even care if we had the whole traditional thing going so long as our kid had love, and a roof over his head. But being born and raised in space hasn't exactly been good to the both of us, and those procedures aren't exactly cheap either, especially on a developer's salary. That's_ if_ they even take. But then, I shouldn't need to tell _you_ what that's like."

That was a low blow, but Quatre couldn't say he didn't deserve it. And not for forgetting his friends didn't have access to the all but limitless funds he did.

It was the lengths they would go to, the pain and hardship they would willfully put themselves through in order to have a child together. That was something Quatre could only imagine, and even then only in his wildest dreams. Consequently, he'd given no thought to how difficult their struggle must be. Sure, he knew what the challenges facing Colony-born parents were, but did he know how they actually _felt_?

Once again, the answer was clearly no.

"I had no idea, Duo."

Perhaps realizing he had gone a hair too far, Duo straightened up and stepped back. "That's okay. I never came out and said it, either. How would you have known, right?"

Still, Quatre felt as though he could have made an effort. Once upon a time, he'd been able to read people a lot better.

"Forget I said any of that, Quatre," Duo said with an uncomfortable scratch of the head. "The last thing I want you to feel is obligated to help us out. That's why I never said anything. You've been good to Hil and me—_too _good, to be honest—but there's some things we just have to handle on our own. No matter how much they might set us back in the short run."

Quatre offered him a smile by way of apology. "I didn't know that's how you two thought of me."

"Well, you gotta admit, that's just the kind of guy you are. I know you don't have a problem throwing around big chunks of change for a friend in need, but you put us in a helluva spot when you do it. It's a debt we can't pay back."

Maybe he was right. Even if the last desire on Quatre's mind was remuneration, he knew he would feel the same way if their situations were reversed. Somehow stock assurances that Duo had done more than enough to make them even, no matter how much Quatre truly meant it, didn't seem right at the moment.

When Duo clapped him on the shoulder and gave it a brotherly squeeze, he knew he didn't need to say anything.

He allowed himself to be brought back into the fold of conversation, where Duo dropped back down in his seat, took up his beer bottle, and said, "What did I miss?"

"Abdul was just telling me how playing classical music for babies in the womb can improve their math and reading scores."

"It worked for my oldest one, at least."

"Wait a minute. I thought we agreed I was gonna introduce the little guy to metal!"

"When our child is reading, Duo, you can do whatever you like."

"Alright, alright. . . . What if it's classic metal?"

-o-

His friends' company might have offered a brief mental respite, but it could only delay the inevitable. Once they were gone, not even the television could keep Quatre's thoughts from wandering.

And they wandered back to Trowa.

Seeing Duo and Hilde so happy only made it worse. Of course, he couldn't begrudge them anything. They had no idea what emotions they stirred inside him. Or how, watching one give the other a hard time just of the fun of it, he pictured Trowa and Dorothy acting the same way when they weren't out in public eye. And felt like crying.

Was that kind of happiness something he and Trowa ever could have had? It seemed so easy to believe now, that once the two of them had been so close, and if not for one major misstep he would be the one in Dorothy's place, going home to Trowa each night, catching up on one another's day over one of Trowa's simple camp dinners. Waking up to him the next morning.

It was too easy to believe that that was all that had happened, and that if somehow Quatre had done the right thing, whatever the right thing was, and they'd managed to work out all the little differences between them, they wouldn't still have ended up in the same place they were at now. It was so, _so_ easy to believe that if everything had gone a different way, the two of them would be together now.

Happy.

Unable to stand the glare of the television, but unable to bear turning it off and being alone again, Quatre pushed himself to his feet, and went to the window.

Through the raindrops on the glass, the colony at night shimmered and wavered like a reflection in a lake. Car lights snaked silently up and down the streets below, pedestrians scurrying to escape the fountains tires churned up and make it safely under the next awning.

He could have been any one of those pedestrians, ten years ago. Tugging his jacket up over the back of his head in vain as he hurried to someplace unknown.

It could have been that very night. It had been raining then as well.


	11. Chapter 11

It was the one phenomenon that felt entirely the same, whether on Earth or in the Colonies. Quatre stepped off the shuttle and immediately noticed the same damp weight in the air, the ozone scent of rain on the pavement.

Like a curtain, it shut out all distractions and allowed him the privacy to examine the mess of doubts and regrets and indecision that had been plaguing him for weeks. Somehow the rain, with its unwavering urgency to make landfall, assured him that the path he had chosen on the flight here was the correct one.

The light was on in the window of his modest off-campus apartment, a clearer "welcome home" than anything else could be. Strange how after several months of living there, it only felt like home after a long trip away. Seeing that light, knowing Trowa was on the other side of that door, waiting for him even after the circumstances of their last parting—

That was more than enough to give Quatre hope.

He raised his hand to knock when the door opened beneath it. Quatre wouldn't have been able to say who was more surprised, himself or Trowa, who stopped and started when he saw Quatre standing there.

A dumbstruck "Quatre" fell from his lips before he could recover himself.

And Quatre must have seemed quite out of character, his jacket soaked from the walk to the step and the rain still dripping into his clearly exhausted eyes. But in that half a second of vulnerability, Quatre thought he caught a glimmer of relief deep down at the bottom of Trowa's, shining back up at him.

He let out his breath. Here he'd had worked himself up on the shuttle flight over nothing. Trowa had not abandoned him when he'd clearly had the means to do so—not to mention the motive. He had stayed.

"I wasn't sure I'd find you here," Quatre said, more to convince himself he wasn't dreaming than anything else. "I would have brought flowers, but I didn't think you were the type to appreciate that sort of thing. And it would have only seemed insincere when what I owe you isn't something that can be bought."

At the reminder, Trowa's grip on the door frame tightened. But Quatre pushed on.

"I wanted to apologize for leaving you the way I did. After everything we've been through together, you deserve so much more of an explanation than what I left you with. That's all I've been able to think about while I've been away."

That, of course, and the way he had tasted and how carefully his breath seemed to brush against Quatre's skin. How the touch of his hand on Quatre's leg, even though it had barely set down at all, had managed to ignite something in Quatre he'd never felt for another soul.

The scent of his clothes that had seemed so ordinary before that night, that now held so much more weight and meaning than Quatre ever could have guessed, he surprised himself at the oddest moments trying to catch the barest trace of Trowa on his own clothes, just because they'd been washed together in the same machine.

Or the way he would almost see Trowa's reflection in the dark glass of a shuttle window, even though he was tens of thousands of kilometers away, and Quatre would be transported back to _Peacemillion_, just like that, reexamining every look between them from the outside, as if his own past were a tableau or television drama. How had he not seen any of this coming a long time ago?

Back then, he'd faced entire legions of mobile suits and mobile dolls, and battle ships larger than most of his family's resource satellites. He'd been out there in the thick of it, energy beams passing him by inches, and each one of them capable of destroying what little bit of gundanium rested between him and certain death in the vacuum of space.

And Trowa was what he was afraid of?

"I'm still trying to make sense of it," Quatre said, shaking his head at himself. The shame, the confusion and senseless fear—those he still couldn't quite shake. "But no matter which angle I look at it from, the one thing I can't deny is the way you make me feel."

"That's it? That's your explanation for taking off without a word?"

Maybe Trowa hadn't said it to be cruel, but the hurt behind it was enough. Quatre couldn't say it wasn't entirely justified. "I know it isn't much of one. You deserve so much more than that, it's true. You opened your heart to me, and I rewarded your honesty by running as far away as I could get. I wronged you, Trowa, deeply. I realize that. But I'd like a chance to make it up to you. If you'll let me."

As Trowa lowered his eyes, Quatre's heart leaped. For a second, he swore he saw the slightest of smiles touch Trowa's lips.

"You're right," he said. "You do owe me that much. I just wish you had better timing."

Quatre faltered for a second, before remembering Trowa had other obligations. "Sure. Why not. It waited this long, I suppose it can wait until after the show—"

"There is no show, Quatre. I'm leaving town. Going back to space, actually. Tonight." Trowa turned his eyes as he explained: "Our manager set the date months ago, and I have every intention of going along. In fact, my cab should be here any second—"

"And when did you think might be a good time to tell me this!"

"I _did _tell you," Trowa said, hoisting the duffel bag Quatre only now noticed onto his shoulder. "I guess in your hurry to get away from me, you must have forgotten."

Trowa tried to slip past him without touching, but Quatre was too stunned to move out of the way and their shoulders collided. The impact jarred Quatre like a beam cannon blast, and sent him racing down the stairs after Trowa. And back out into the rain.

"I'm sorry!" he shouted after Trowa. "You have to believe me! I've been thinking everything over this whole time I've been away, and I've changed." For better or worse, he felt in his soul that he was a different person from the Quatre who ran from his apartment afraid and unsure. "_You_ changed me. Again. It was wrong of me to run, I know, but you have to understand, Trowa, I didn't know what else to do! You acted as though you expected us to go from friends to lovers in an instant, without any chance to step back and reexamine what we're supposed to be to one another." And everything I thought I knew about myself. "Don't you see? You were asking the impossible!"

"And I thought nothing was impossible when it came to us," Trowa rounded on him when Quatre touched his arm. "I thought that after all we accomplished, and the odds we were up against—after what I survived so I could come back to _you_ and fight for a world _you_ believed in? After all that, I thought nothing was impossible.

"But you made it perfectly clear to me when you left that your future is more important to you than I am. No," Trowa corrected himself. "You wouldn't be that selfish. It was for your colony's future, wasn't it? That's the reason you wouldn't give me a chance."

"They'll crucify me," Quatre said in his own defense. "I don't expect you to know what that's like for me. You come from a black-and-white world, and you've never had to carry the weight of the expectations I have had with me, every day of my life, on your shoulders. It's hard enough just living _one_ double life, Trowa. It's bad enough that I have to keep my part in the war secret. If you and I were lovers—you know it wouldn't stay secret for long. They'd throw me out. I might still be able to keep the company, but they'd never take me seriously after that." He shook his head. "It was a risk I wasn't sure I could afford to take."

"You mean, _I'm _a risk."

That didn't come out the way Quatre meant it at all. But it was the truth. Trowa was a liability, a threat to his plans for himself. Quatre had said just as much himself.

Still, "It isn't that simple—"

"Then what is it, Quatre? Just give it to me plain already so I can understand. Am I pushing you too hard to feel something you don't?"

"I wouldn't say feeling is the problem." He felt too much for Trowa. _That_ was the problem. Too much for someone in his position to feel, and get away with with impunity.

"So, is it that you don't love me? Or you can't?"

"I can't be a Winner and do this with you, Trowa! How many ways do I have to say it?"

The cold cruelty of his words surprised them both; but once they were out, there was no taking them back. And Quatre had thought each time he lied or skirted the issue was hard enough. Another twist in the vice, constricting him until he felt he could hardly breathe.

All of which was nothing compared to the shame of that one declaration, and the hurt that showed in Trowa's eyes because of it. Of course, he would never allow the true depth of his feeling to show on his face. So just knowing what an iceberg of pain and hatred must be lurking just beneath his calm surface—and Quatre to blame for it—

It cut into Quatre's very soul.

"That'll be mine," Trowa muttered as a cab pulled to the curb across the empty street.

"I don't want you to go. Not until we can work this out between us. I know that we can. Despite what I said, I do believe we can find some happy medium—"

"Then come back to space with me."

Quatre started. "Me? N-now? But I just got back—I-I have a semester to finish out and—"

"I know," Trowa said, "and that's why I'm asking you. If you've really changed as much as you say you have, then you should be able to do that much for me."

Maybe it was just the reflection of the street lamp off the damp, but the light that possessed Trowa's eyes as he searched Quatre's was strangely hypnotic.

"Show me, Quatre," he murmured, so close Quatre could feel the warmth of Trowa's breath on his skin, "give me some sign of this change of heart you say you've had, and I'll do whatever you want."

It would be so easy. All Quatre had to do was lean in and kiss those lips, like he'd been dreaming of doing so badly those past few weeks.

But no sooner could he picture himself doing it than he thought of the driver of the cab stopped just a short distance across the street, watching them as he waited for his fare. He might have lulled himself into some fantasy that they were alone in their conversation, but now Quatre realized how narrow his field of vision had become. Only now did he find the clarity to see the other cars passing by their street, each one of them filled with eyes. Any one of his neighbors could be looking out their windows as they spoke. Any one of them could snap a picture, send it to a tabloid or post it on the Net for all the Earth Sphere to see.

All it took was a single rumor to make it back to L4 and his father's rivals would make sure the public never heard the end of it. They would use the opportunity to question his ability to lead, his ability to reason. His moral integrity. For all their talk of social progress and democracy, they would never stand for the Winner scion cavorting with some unknown without a formal education or respectable employment, not even a real family name.

Let alone—and God forbid—another man.

He would never be able to give his colony what they expected of him so long as he was seen with Trowa. He would be disgraced. And before he'd even had the opportunity to truly prove himself, on his own merits. Was that the kind of person his father would have wanted him to be? Never mind was that the kind of man he wanted to be himself?

Quatre stepped back, a shudder running through him. "I can't." His voice was barely a whisper above the hush of the rain. "You have to give me some _time_, Trowa."

As if he hadn't had enough time already. Quatre could see the unspoken retort all but sitting on Trowa's tongue, waiting for its chance. He resigned himself to it. This wasn't how he'd imagined their reunion going on the shuttle here. But what was Quatre supposed to do if what Trowa was asking of him was something he just couldn't face?

But instead of the accusation Quatre was expecting, all that escaped Trowa was a sigh. "I've got to go."

His voice already sounded far away as he stepped away from the curb. It wasn't as if he were leaving forever, but even then Quatre had a sense that something between them was slipping away, and if he let Trowa go now, he would lose it forever. There had to be something else he could do— "Isn't there anything I can say that will make you stay?"

When Trowa paused in his stride, Quatre's heart leaped with hope.

"If you have to ask that," Trowa said to him over his shoulder, "then no. I don't think there is."

He swung his duffel into the backseat, and climbed in without a single look back.

When the cab pulled away and disappeared around the corner, Quatre could only stand there, wondering what he had done wrong. Once again he'd lost the one person who should have meant more to him than anything else, and once again there wasn't a thing he could do about it.

-o-

But that wasn't true, was it?

When he'd been wracked with grief above that colony and desperate to repair the damage he had done, desperate to fly toward the flash of light that had been the Vayeate and do whatever was in his power to do, even knowing he might not like what he found waiting there for him, at least he had _tried _to do something. Thwarted every step of the way, but the fact remained, he _had _tried.

Quatre couldn't very well say that about that rainy night, looking back. The benefit of ten years allowed him to see that, as hopeless as he had felt then, as tight a corner as he had backed himself into, he had only himself to blame for the years of silence that resulted from it.

He could have gone after Trowa.

He could have joined him in space at any time, like Trowa had offered—dogged his every move and gone to every show, and never given up until Trowa accepted his penance. The penance he was owed at the very least for Quatre's treatment of him. And his feelings, offered up so raw and more openly than someone like Trowa was used to offering them, only to have them handed back at every turn.

For that reason alone, he didn't deserve Trowa. What right did he have to stand in the way now that Trowa had chosen to move on and find happiness with someone else? He threw away his own chance at being that one for a career, a sense of duty to an ideal higher than himself. True peace.

The tough part, the part that came only with ten years' worth of hindsight, was understanding that it never had to be that way. He had been presented with a choice, and he'd chosen self-sacrifice. He had chosen to cut out the one person he'd once loved more than his own life itself.

His bullet wound twinged—not with pain, but as if with lingering pressure. Another shoulder colliding with his by accident, only sorry it couldn't be intentional, under far more ideal circumstances. If Quatre had just gone after him to begin with, if he'd only proved himself like Trowa wanted him to—hell, like Quatre wanted to, only he couldn't find the courage—maybe things would be different. Maybe he would have been the one showing Trowa off at the museum gala last week, nursing champagne headaches together back in the room they shared.

Maybe they would have torn each other apart, and be speaking less to each other than they were now. But at least he would have been able to say he did _something. _At least he would have been able to say he'd tried.

The last thing Quatre wanted to be confronted with at that moment was Heero's letter, but as he reached up to massage the ache from his shoulder, it seemed to find his fingers all on its own, calling to him with a crinkle of paper from his breast pocket. And he couldn't find any excuse within himself to push back the inevitable any longer.

The letter and its envelope must have been folded and creased so many times, and survived who knew what else in Wufei's care, it was smooth to the touch. Quatre's name written in Heero's impeccable print had faded as the paper aged, reminding him as well as anything that it had been written for a teenager who'd had little room in his life for romance or career advancement, whose only thought at the time had been to survive a newborn peace. All the more reason not to open it, he told himself: What relevance could it possibly hold for the person he had become today?

But he was deluding himself if he thought he had really changed that much.

He took out the letter, and carefully unfolded the one handwritten page.

He made it about halfway down before he realized the warm sensation down the side of his face was a tear.

Quatre had to laugh at himself for it, though it only made his eyes and throat burn harder. Heero. He always did know Quatre's heart better than Quatre did himself. And though he might have written the letter more than a decade ago, Quatre wouldn't have put it past his old friend to have the foresight to know just when he would need it the most.

"Hardly the Zero System."

Yet, for all his trepidation, for all the darkness of his memories, it was as though a weight had been lifted from his shoulders upon reading those words. The whole past week in C-421, Quatre had felt the shadow of the past trying to keep pace with his stride, afraid that if he slowed down for even a moment, it would engulf him.

When, in fact, that was just what he needed to set him free.

-o-

The first thing Henry Sakamoto said the next morning, after he got a good, hard look at Quatre, was: "It's probably none of my business, sir, but . . . Are you on drugs?"

Quatre almost laughed aloud at that. "Why in the world would you ask that?"

"I'm sorry." His driver straightened. "It's just that you seem very different this morning, Mr. Winner. Not in a bad way," he was quick to put in when Quatre's hand shot to his hair. "If anything, I'd say you look to be in better health than any other time I've seen you. In the last week, that is."

Quatre smiled. "Probably because last night was the first full night's worth of sleep I've had in . . . God, I don't even know how long." And he had Heero to thank for that. Somehow the words in his letter had put Quatre's worries to rest where all other assurances had failed.

"Oh. Well, if that's the case," his driver said as he got behind the wheel, "then I say more power to you. You've had a busy week, Mr. Winner, and by any standards a very trying one."

"No busier than yours. It couldn't have been easy trying to keep me safe."

Sakamoto tried to wave him off, but Quatre wouldn't let it be. "It was more than they should have asked of you, to watch out for me all by yourself. And for that, I blame myself. I should have known better than to think I could travel without security, and I feel all the worse for not knowing you were pulling double duty."

"I don't want you to worry about it," Sakamoto finally managed to butt in.

"But I do! What right do I have to complain about the sleep I've gotten—or haven't—when you've been up all hours of the night just trying to keep up with me?"

To his surprise, his driver had a good chuckle at that. "I manage to get enough, sir. You'd be amazed how much energy you can get from a good ten-minute nap. Oh, I sleep when I can," he amended quickly, catching Quatre's look of horror in the mirror. "There's a trick to it. Maybe I should give you some pointers. It's something you mostly have to teach yourself, but once you get the hang of it, you can catch some sleep just about anywhere."

It was nothing specifically that he said, but something in the way Sakamoto stated his faith in his technique so nonchalantly reminded Quatre eerily of Heero. That guy could be talking to you one second, and sleeping like a corpse a few seconds later. Completely dead to the world. Whatever Heero was doing now, with tricks like that, he would have made the perfect chauffeur.

Quatre tried to cover a laugh at the thought. "What?" Sakamoto wanted to know.

"Did you ever have any children, Mr. Sakamoto?"

"Not that I'm aware of." It seemed to him a queer question for Quatre to ask. Perhaps another side effect of being well-rested. "Why would you ask?"

"No reason," Quatre said, smiling to himself. "Just that I think I've met your son."

Several lights passed them by while Sakamoto tried to work out that puzzle of a comment, or whether he was supposed to take it as a joke. "In any event," he eventually started again, choosing the safer route of ignoring it completely, "I should be the one apologizing to you. I failed to stop that man before he could fire a shot—"

"A shot that I'm almost thankful for after the week I've had.

"I know it sounds crazy," Quatre went on before his driver could protest, "and that I easily could have been killed. But if everything had unfolded the way it was scheduled to, without a single hitch, I would be a very different person than I am now, just a few days later. And I don't know if that's a person I would _want _to be, looking back. There's so much I never would have known—or never would have had the courage to face otherwise. And maybe nothing else in the Earth Sphere will change, maybe no one will feel the difference but me, but that's enough. That's enough for me to be glad it happened the way it did. Isn't it?"

Perhaps Sakamoto didn't know how to answer. Perhaps he was chewing over the best way to approach a question as crazy as that and the sudden gravity in Quatre's demeanor kept it from coming out.

Not that Quatre needed an answer. He was perfectly content to travel along in their amiable silence, which spoke enough of their understanding without need of words. The appointment he was heading to was on the other side of the colony, but Quatre was looking forward to the ride. He felt no sense of hurry, even with the press and noise of the heavy morning traffic around them.

When their crawl finally slowed to a stop, Sakamoto turned to him again.

And said, "I have something that rightly belongs to you."

"Not you too," Quatre joked as he accepted the envelope from Sakamoto over the back of the driver's seat; but it was really only to cover how uneasy he felt. "It seems like everyone has something to give me these days." He didn't want to seem ungrateful, either, even if he was hesitant to accept.

"Well, don't thank me just yet," the man huffed.

When Quatre opened the envelope and tipped its contents into his palm, whatever was left of a smile on his lips vanished. A golden ring tumbled out. Quatre caught enough of the simple inscription running around the inside of the band for his heart to leap painfully in his chest.

_For Katherine, _it read, _my forever._

"This is—" The word caught in Quatre's throat, unable to go any further, and his tongue was no less cooperative. Such a simple word, yet for him it had somehow become taboo. Like the name of God for someone who'd thought they'd given up believing.

He looked to Sakamoto, wide-eyed. "Where did you get this?"

In response, the man snorted. "It's a long story. Probably best you don't ask me how long I've had it. Suffice it to say, your father gave it to me to hold on to for him. I like to believe he entrusted it to me so that I might have an opportunity to give to you one day. There was just never a good time before now."

What was it with these Preventers and timing? "Of course not. Up until a few days ago, the last time I saw you, I was still learning basic arithmetic."

There was something queer and yet familiar about the weight of the ring in Quatre's palm. Or rather, the lack of. "This isn't gold." It was small. How strange it was, to think after all these years that his mother must have had delicate hands when he couldn't even picture her face. Surreal. But the ring should have weighed more.

Of course, Quatre already knew the reason it didn't. "Neo-titanium."

"The stuff your father's forefathers built their empire on. What better material could symbolize a love as strong as theirs?"

Quatre closed his fingers around the ring, and lowered his eyes. "That's where you're mistaken," he said to the back of Sakamoto's seat. "I mean, you must be. A love like what you're describing. . . ."

If it existed, then why had his father been content enough to let Quatre believe, for the first thirteen years of his life, that he was grown in a lab?

"If he loved her that much, why didn't he ever tell me about her?"

He never even knew what she was like, what kind of person she had been. Whether she loved Quatre as much as he would have loved her, given the chance. Whether she loved his father. What would she think of Quatre if she could see him now? If she'd lived?

Tears forced themselves up behind Quatre's eyes. Before they could fall, Sakamoto said: "Some things are just too painful to talk about. Especially to children. Some things—some people, Mr. Winner—we'd just as soon forget. Not because we don't care, but because it just hurts too damn much to remember them. I'm sure that's the only reason he never told you what a remarkable young woman your mother was."

And Quatre must have reminded his father of her every single day. He'd seen pictures of Katherine Winner. He knew her fair features were mirrored in his own, no matter how much else he resembled Zayeed.

And every day, Quatre's very act of existing would have reminded his father how his mother did not. Maybe Zayeed didn't in fact blame Quatre for her death, but . . . It was understandable, given the circumstances, why he would want to get rid of a reminder, like that ring, of all he had lost.

"Maybe you're too young yet to know what I mean," Sakamoto went on in Quatre's silence, "but everyone's got one or two like that in their lives by the time they reach my age."

Quatre couldn't help smiling at that, however sadly. If the man only knew. . . . "Actually, I know exactly what you mean."

There was one person he would be better off forgetting. Someone who would be better off, at least, forgetting him. To think Quatre had been so adamant once about being remembered by the boy he was still, at the time, ashamed to think he had almost murdered. Even knowing what pain it would bring Trowa, and how much he would be justified in hating Quatre for what he did to him—still Quatre had kept pushing, unwilling to give up.

Because he'd known Trowa would never be content with not knowing. No matter how much heartache and frustration they brought each other, neither one of them could ever reach the point they would want to forget.

"Mr. Sakamoto?" No, the name sounded too formal for a request like this. "Henry," Quatre started over. "Would you take me to the spaceport? There's something I have to do, and I'm afraid it can't wait."

In fact, he might already be too late. Without all the details, there was no way for him to be sure. All Quatre knew was, he had to try.

"What about your appointment, Mr. Winner?"

"I suppose we'll just have to reschedule."

By the smile that greeted Quatre in the rear view mirror, he didn't need to explain any further for Sakamoto to understand his train of thought.

Then again, perhaps he was just as eager as any driver on the road for any excuse to get out of this Monday morning gridlock. "Certainly, sir," he said. "I'll have you there in a jiffy."


	12. Chapter 12

From the speakers overhead, a clear female voice interrupted the muzak to call for boarding at a gate that wasn't theirs.

As soon as he realized the message didn't concern him, Trowa blotted it out. Just like he blotted out the scene of travelers coming and going around him, and the faint outline of the colony's wheel highlighted against the backdrop of stars outside the windows. It was a tableau disconnected from him. One spaceport was just the same as another, nothing changed since the days he came and went with something to actually hide.

So why did this time feel different? He'd finished with everything that needed his attention at the museum. Besides, he would be back in a few weeks if the curators needed anything else of him between now and then. Maybe for the first time in his life, he had an inkling of what it must be like to leave his own child on its own for the first time, even if the child in this case was an exhibit of dead mobile suits. But that didn't quite explain it either.

Dorothy's return with his coffee came at just the right time to put those musings to rest. Some people just knew naturally how to dress for every occasion, and the saying went double for her. Short of donning an astrosuit, she looked as ready for space travel as anyone could, loose ends neatly tucked in or pulled back, an armory of necessities hidden away within a tight, designer bag. Everything in its place.

"Sorry it took so long," she sighed. "If you can believe it, they had to brew a new pot. What a novel concept, a coffee kiosk selling coffee!"

She threw herself down in her seat with a melodramatic flair, and Trowa smiled. The coffee fiasco instantly forgotten, she noted his mobile. "Everything still okay?"

Trowa had forgotten to put it away. His mind must have really drifted since he'd checked his mailbox. "Yeah," he said as he put it back in his pocket. "No changes this morning."

"And you're sure you're alright to leave with me?" Dorothy had mentioned before that he could stay in the colony if his work required it; she was more than capable of speaking to potential supporters about the project herself. But it was the principle of the thing. They were partners in this now, in more ways than just where the project was concerned. He had agreed to go to Earth with her, and he would not break that agreement.

Besides, he wanted to go. It felt like it was for the best. When he came back to C-421 in a few weeks, Quatre would be gone, on to his next campaign stop and too busy to give Trowa a second thought. He was sure Quatre would agree, he could do with one fewer distraction. They both could.

"Mr. Barton?"

Trowa looked up at the man who had spoken. The navy and bronze jacket looming over them gave the guy away; but the Preventer badge was the last thing Trowa expected to greet him here at the gate. Trowa narrowed his eyes. "Can I help you?"

"Would you come with me, sir? This won't take long."

"And may I ask what this is about? There didn't seem to be a problem at the security checkpoint," Dorothy said.

The man avoided meeting her eyes. Not that that was anything out of the ordinary: Dorothy Catalonia's reputation proceeded her everywhere. Even Une's agents were intimidated by her. "It's nothing to worry about, ma'am. Just some routine questions regarding customs. This should only take a moment to clear up. We'll have you back in time for your flight," he assured Trowa.

Customs? As if that didn't sound suspicious enough to Trowa, even the agent didn't sound like he believed it.

But he gave Dorothy a reassuring smile nonetheless. "I needed to get up for a walk anyway," Trowa said as he stood. "Last chance to stretch in three hundred thousand kilometers."

The agent showed him to one of the security offices in the back: an interrogation room, with blinds drawn across the window to hide whatever was inside.

But whatever Trowa was expecting to find waiting there for him, it wasn't Quatre, standing alone in the back corner.

Something hardened inside Trowa. "I should have known."

"I know," Quatre shrugged. "It's truly a low point for me, abusing my influence like this."

Trowa refrained from agreeing. Doing so certainly wouldn't have made anything better.

"But I didn't know any other way to get you to see me. You didn't exactly give me a chance last time we spoke. Close the door?"

As Quatre stepped toward him, Trowa was tempted to refuse, and step back through it instead. Now that it was clear they weren't holding him here for any official reason, he would be within his rights to leave. But even if he didn't agree with Quatre's methods, it would have been callous to walk out when he had already gone to such lengths to get them alone. At least before hearing what Quatre had to say.

Against his better judgment, Trowa eased the door closed behind him. "Alright. Now that you have me here, what did you want to say?"

Instead of answering, Quatre took Trowa's hand in his, and pressed something small and cold into his palm. He didn't let go, either. He must have known Trowa's first response would be to hand the gift back.

Especially when he saw it was a small golden ring. It was too small to be meant for him, and the inscription inside was of a woman's name. But what it symbolized was more than enough. After all this time, to give him this now. . . .

"I can't accept this."

"I figured you would say something like that."

"I mean it, Quatre. I don't know how many ways I have to say it—"

"But you love Dorothy and you're marrying her, I know."

If this wasn't some last-ditch effort to win Trowa back, then— Well, he could hardly believe that Quatre would be so selfless either. "I'm just not sure you should be giving me something like this."

Quatre must have guessed the direction of his thoughts. But if it had belonged to Quatre's mother, as Trowa suspected, it didn't seem to bother him. "The only people that ring ever had any meaning for are long gone. They have no use for it anymore. _I _certainly have no desire to hang on to it. That's why I want you to have it.

"_This,"_ he said, surprising Trowa again, "is my blessing, Trowa. To you and Dorothy. I should have given it to you before, when you gave me the news, but . . . well. I'm giving it to you now. I'd like it if you would give her this ring for me. Of course, you'll have to change the name on the inscription, but the sentiment is more or less the same. And I think she'll appreciate that it's gundanium."

The peculiar weight of it had not escaped Trowa. It was what had brought them together, what had brought them to this point.

But give it to Dorothy? As what, a wedding band, with Quatre's seal of a approval all but stamped into it? Trowa wasn't sure that was even appropriate. "Quatre, I don't—"

"Then take it as my apology as well. For all the trouble I've put you through. You've both done more for me than you realize," Quatre said with eyes downcast, "certainly more than I could ever repay, and not just on this trip either. But especially you, Trowa. It's taken me a long time to truly understand what an idiot I've been not to realize it sooner."

Trowa couldn't help a small smile. "You haven't been the only one."

For ten years he'd been wondering if he hadn't chosen the wrong path, made one wrong move that the both of them had been paying for ever since. Wondering if, if he hadn't been so stubborn, if he'd had a little more patience when Quatre was asking for it, there might have been a future for them.

Seeming to read the train of his thoughts, Quatre met his eyes.

"I'd like to think that things might have turned out differently between us. These past ten years I've been clinging to that belief as if it could possibly change things, when all along it was keeping me from seeing what was right in front of me. I may not be able to change what we said to one another back then—or what we didn't say, or do," he amended with regret, "but the fact remains, after all this time, that I have never loved a single soul as much as I've loved you. I don't think I ever will. And if I never told you that . . . I would never be able to forgive myself."

What could Trowa say? It was the one thing he'd been wishing to hear from Quatre since the war, and now that he had it, he felt no sense of relief. Getting what he wanted wasn't supposed to hurt so much. It wasn't supposed to feel like losing.

From the palm of his hand, the ring stared back up at him not unlike Heavyarms used to. Asking him the same soundless question: _What are you going to do now?_

Before he could figure out an answer, Quatre made the decision for him, folding his fingers around the ring and blotting out its glare.

"Take care of her, Trowa," he said, "and forget about me."

Last Quatre spoke those old words to him was more than a dozen years ago through a pain-induced fog. Trowa had no reason to obey him then. He didn't know Dorothy, and didn't care, and she wasn't the one who was wounded. Not physically, at least.

But now he did know her. He'd fallen in love with that young woman who couldn't cry, and Quatre was nothing if not in his right mind. Trowa had no excuses.

Though the meaning of those words struck him as no less fatalistic.

A wry smile tugged at Quatre's lips. He couldn't help adding, if only to break the tension and cover his bases: "Unless, of course, it doesn't work out between you. In which case I have first dibs."

Trowa laughed lightly at that. "Of course. But you do understand I can't make any promises. Dorothy would kill me if I did."

"She'd kill both of us." Sobering, his hand fell to Trowa's sleeve, then back to his side in resignation. "I hope we can still be friends," Quatre said, "like we once were. I don't want to lose you again."

Trowa's feelings answered for him. Maybe it was foolish to let them dictate his actions again, after the mess they had made so far, but it felt like the only right thing to do. He placed his free hand on Quatre's shoulder, and when that wasn't enough, drew him into his arms, holding him close. Quatre's surprise quickly melted to relief, his good arm going about Trowa's back. Holding him there as firmly as the universe would allow. It wasn't a kiss, but it was enough.

Even though all Trowa could think about at the moment was how he was going to miss that warmth. A part of him Dorothy would never know about would always miss Quatre like this. "Thank you, Quatre," Trowa murmured into his shirt collar. For letting him go. For taking him back. For everything.

Neither one of them seemed ready to let go, but Trowa did have a flight to catch. He could see Quatre was thinking the same thing, too, when he stepped back. "I should let you get back. I wouldn't want you to miss your shuttle on account of me. I caused you enough trouble today already, sending a Preventer agent to pull you away from your gate."

He could joke about it, but for all he had grown up since that slight, towheaded boy Trowa had met on a battlefield, Quatre suddenly seemed so small.

But there was a strength beneath it, just like there was then, a certainty that this too was something he would put behind him, once he'd given himself the proper amount of time.

Yes, Quatre would be fine.

Maybe it wasn't a good idea in light of things, but Trowa turned with his hand on the doorknob and said, "I would have married you, you know. I wasn't just pulling your leg. Maybe I just shouldn't mention it, but I want to set the record straight. I would have been yours forever. In a heartbeat. If you'd only asked."

-o-

When Quatre emerged from the interrogation room a few strides behind Trowa, he found Wufei waiting for him. Arms crossed over his chest, eyes closed as he leaned against the window, and a wry smile on his lips.

He must have had some inkling of what unfolded inside. At very least, he'd seen Trowa leave.

So Quatre beat him to the punch. "You don't approve."

"Of your pulling your connections and asking my people to _lie_ so you could bring a civilian in for extra questioning for personal reasons?" He humphed. "No. But I've come to expect a certain departure of rational thought when it comes to you and Barton."

"Ah," Quatre said. "That new understanding you spoke of."

"No. _That_ I take back. Turns out I don't understand you two at all."

A smile spread across Quatre's own lips at that. "To tell you the truth, neither do I." While Wufei tried to figure out what he'd meant by that, Quatre retrieved a familiar envelope from his breast pocket. "By the way. I wanted to give this back to you."

Wufei blinked as he took Heero's letter in hand. "Give it back?"

"Don't worry, Wufei, I read it. Just like you wanted me to. Last night."

Now Quatre saw why Wufei would be reluctant to part with it. But the words were old, written twelve years ago, to a teenage soldier newly liberated from the bonds of battle. What Heero had to say to him was useful, but Quatre couldn't help feeling it had little to do with him anymore.

"Your promise to Heero is complete," he said. "So there's no reason you should feel like you can't accept it. That letter never really belonged to me anyway—despite Heero's best intentions. I have to believe it found its way to you for a reason."

Wufei shot him a distrusting look out of the corner of his eye. But the letter disappeared quickly enough into his jacket's inner pocket nonetheless.

"So, is this trend of giving away your possessions going to continue?" he asked without looking away.

"Not unless some other long-lost thing that should have gone to me suddenly makes an appearance."

That didn't seem to be what Wufei was getting at, though. And Quatre's lighter mood this morning could not have escaped his attention. "I'm just wondering what it is you're planning to do."

If he was asking if this was Quatre's version of a suicide note, then Quatre had to laugh. What _was_ he going to do? A canceled appointment came to mind, but the excuse he gave them felt so childish, he wasn't particularly eager to speak to those people again very soon.

"I guess I plan to win election in my colony," Quatre sighed, slipping his hands into his trouser pockets. "It's about time I returned to work and started giving the people what they want. That's what I set myself on this course to do. And that's what Heero would tell us to do, isn't it? Just keep moving forward."

-o-

"So, you just gave him the ring? Just like that? After just discovering it existed after twenty—what?—twenty-eight years?" Relena looked at him sideways, as if unsure he was really the Quatre she knew. "You're a hell of a lot braver than I'd ever be."

"Bravery had nothing to do with it," Quatre assured her. "I didn't give it a second thought. It just . . . I don't know. It just felt _right_."

It was still too early in the evening for the lounge's main bulk of clientele, and therefore too early for the pianist to start his shift. So no one protested when Quatre took over his seat.

While Relena sat nearby, he played what melodies came to mind. Classical pieces that he embellished as his mood saw fit, with light yet melancholy, jazzy variations. He had little time for music these days, with a campaign and a business empire to run; but it came back to him after only a little warming up, the memory residing in his fingers, and the less he thought about what they were doing, the more easily the music flowed.

The stiff drink helped as well, though just enough to loosen him up after being so long out of practice. He hoped God, if he existed, would pardon him that much after the day—hell, the _week_ he'd had.

In vino veritas, as the saying went. But one thing it couldn't loosen from him was the truth about his feelings for Trowa. Whatever Relena might have thought about him if she knew, he owed it to Trowa after their parting at the spaceport, if not his own sanity, to keep his feelings caged and docile, where they could touch no one's life but his own.

In any case, Quatre suspected she already knew, and might have had an inkling as far back as thirteen years ago, when she offered him the material support to find Trowa. He hadn't exactly been a subtle teenager.

Quatre had told her about the ring, however, and Relena watched him through heavy eyes as she listened to him play, her temple propped on her fist. "Alright. But I still don't understand what would possess you. That was your _mother's_, Quatre. If it had been me, you'd have had to rob my casket to make me part with it."

Quatre smiled to himself. "But that's just the thing. This last week has made me realize just how much I've been weighed down by my memories. It's like karma. There were regrets I held on to like they were the last things keeping my head above water, when in reality they'd been dragging me deeper and deeper under all along. And me in my ignorance, I just kept piling more on."

He looked down at the keyboard. It was easier to be frank about a life coming full circle when he let the music do most of the speaking for him. "I'm going to start over fresh, and being given that ring and Heero's letter after all these years really weren't helping any—"

"Wait. A letter from Heero?" Relena sat up straight. "When were you going to tell me about this?"

"Um, to be honest, I really hadn't given it any thought."

"Don't you think that's the kind of thing I'd like to know about, Quatre Winner? Well. Hand it over." She held out a hand. "You are going to let me read it, aren't you?"

Quatre was almost sorry to disappoint her. "I gave it back to Wufei," he said with an apologetic shrug. "It belonged to him much more than it ever did to me. It's not that I don't understand how much it would mean to you, to be able to hear from him again. You, more than any of us, lost something dear when Heero disappeared. I know a little something about distance, but that kind of silence—from someone you love that completely—that's something I can't even imagine."

What Quatre was expecting was a sympathetic nod, or perhaps a "thank you for understanding". Certainly not the impish grin that did await him on Relena's lips.

"About that. You'll have to forgive me, Quatre, but I haven't been entirely honest with you where Heero and myself are concerned."

"What part?" He was sure he hadn't read their adoration for one another incorrectly. Quatre might have been naive when it came to his own sexuality back in those days, but those two hadn't exactly been discrete.

"Well, to be honest," Relena amended, "I haven't exactly _lied _to you and the others either. Let's just say I've simply allowed you all to come to a conclusion and not bothered to correct your assumptions. You see, I might have seen a little more of Heero in the years since the Second Eve War."

And that was big news? "And? When you say 'a little more of' . . ."

Relena rolled her eyes. "We might have hooked up a few times since then. Mostly annually, but not always."

At Quatre's slack-jawed stare, she winced. "Come on. Don't look at me like that, Quatre. You'll make me feel like a fallen woman. Or like I've betrayed you all in some way. Really, I didn't want to tell any of you because I knew it would be against Heero's wishes. You know what Duo would do as soon as he found out Heero was still making contact with any of us. Hell, it's enough of a risk just sharing this with you!"

Of course, it made perfect sense. It was only natural their first instinctual desire would be to see Heero again, if only to reassure themselves of his existence, each and every one of them. After receiving that letter, Quatre thought their old comrade might have more to worry about from Wufei than Duo, but the point still stood.

"When did this start?"

"After the first war, actually. Each time my birthday rolled around he would leave me a stuffed bear. Hand-delivered, somewhere he knew I would find it right away, just so I knew he was in the area, watching out for me. I can't even describe how frustrating it was, knowing I'd been so close to him—probably walked right by him, even, and didn't recognize him. Maybe that was why he did it the way he did. Maybe he thought it would be less awkward.

"Well, one year I managed to catch him. Or," she chuckled, "maybe he allowed himself to get caught. He'd never admit I'd gotten better at tracking him down. Whichever it was, we were both young adults by that time. Things just happened. After that, he would meet me sometimes when we happened to be in the same place. Discretely, of course. He didn't want anyone to see me with him, thought someone might recognize his face from the war."

Relena sobered at that thought. "If you want my opinion, I think that's the reason he keeps himself so distant. He doesn't want to be a burden on any of us. He must know that as Zero's pilot, he'll only cause trouble wherever he goes. He'll be remembered as a hero in the long run, but only as long as he stays hidden."

That was perhaps one reason, Quatre thought. Certainly the reason Heero would have given them if he were pressed for an explanation. But Quatre knew a side of him Relena might not have. Or at least chose not to acknowledge aloud. It was just the type of person Heero was. Whatever affinity he felt for the rest of them inside—_if _he felt even some of what Quatre suspected he did—his very nature prevented him from showing it.

In that way, he's kinder than I could ever be, Quatre mused; probably without even meaning to be.

"But that all stopped about three years ago," Relena went on when Quatre said nothing. "I couldn't tell you why. I still get a cryptic e-mail now and then—no name on it, of course, but I know it's from him—but I haven't seen him since."

"He's busy changing the world in his own way," Quatre agreed, surprised how easily that fantasy came to him. "In classic Heero-like anonymity."

"And the world goes on turning without him, as if it would forget he ever existed."

No, it could never forget him, Quatre thought. And he knew that, despite her words, Relena felt the same way. The world would never be able to forget Zero.

In another hundred years, when the two of them were dead and gone, it was the gundams' contribution that would be remembered most. For ending two wars, and for saving the Earth from devastation. Their symbol would live on, while everything that Quatre did as himself—not as Sandrock's pilot—would become a footnote in the pages of history. If he played his cards right. It was an irony that might have haunted other men—it might have haunted his own grandfathers, powerful men all in their own generations, whom no one living now seemed to remember by name.

But it didn't bother Quatre. Give him the serenity of an empty desert, and he would be a happy man for the rest of his days. As long as he knew he had done well.

But not yet. God willing, he still had a long, full life ahead of him. One which he was only beginning to live.

"When this is all over," he found himself saying, "would you like to get a drink sometime?"

Relena looked at him funny. "You mean, like we're doing now? Or do you mean, a drink and a date?"

Quatre hadn't been sure himself when he asked. "The latter, actually. A drink and a date. Now, I know what you're thinking," he said to Relena's suspicious stare, "and I'm not just asking because I'm lonely and you seem lonely too, or because it feels like everyone around us is either getting married or having babies. There would be no obligations, of course. No strings attached. We could just see how it goes. Just—"

"Drinks."

"Yes."

"And a date."

When she put it that way, the strings sounded exactly like the reason he was asking. "I'm not explaining myself very well here, am I?"

"No, not really," Relena laughed. "But that's alright. I just can't help but wonder what people will think. I mean, you and me, Quatre. You're running for election back in your colony, and here I'm supposed to be this unbiased diplomat—"

"They'll probably think we're in cahoots."

"They will, won't they?"

"There'll be speculation. They'll think, the foreign minister is fraternizing with a former gundam pilot, something _must _be up."

"My God, you're right." But the glimmer of excitement in her eyes at the very idea didn't escape Quatre's attention. She hadn't changed so much in thirteen years. "There's no telling what they can piece together from one innocent drink these days. A girl has to second guess each decision in her private life lest it be taken out of context by the mass media. Who knows what they're saying about us as we speak?"

They had been speaking sarcastically, but maybe they weren't so off the mark after all. Maybe Quatre shouldn't have asked to begin with.

"That's alright. If you're not interested—"

"I'm sorry," Relena said with a shake of her head. "I'm not so good at this either. What I mean to say is, to hell with public opinion. Quatre, I would love to go on a date with you."


	13. Chapter 13

"Space," the professor said. "It was the human race's last frontier, and its grandest dream, finally realized in After Colony Year One with the completion of the first permanent space colony—an achievement so great, so unprecedented in our history, it changed the way we speak about time."

An image of the original Orbital Village dominated the screen behind the podium, a myriad of big wheels, turning in space.

Beside the door outside the lecture hall, the plaque read D-105. When Quatre asked where he might find the professor, the university's staff led him here, and didn't question the reason for his asking even once. And why should they? The name had changed, and there was nothing suspicious about trying to track down a certain instructor. Perhaps they figured Quatre for an old colleague, or a former student, not knowing both were true, just not in any way they would have suspected.

"Consider the case of the space pioneers who first looked back at the Earth from space, and saw it in its entirety for what it was: a fragile oasis of life floating through the dead vacuum of space. When they sent that image back to Earth, they did so with the conviction that once people saw it, they would realize the oneness of the human race and put aside their petty differences.

"They thought this again as the first industries were constructed on the Moon, and again when the treaty was signed that banned nuclear arms. A full century after mankind began living in space, the dream of the Colonies was saved from almost certain failure, and once again men spoke of unification as if it were something that would last forever. But we all know how that turned out."

The story was familiar to Quatre, taking him back to his childhood, and the lectures that his private tutor would give him on the shuttle as Quatre daydreamed, pretending to pay attention. "This is _your_ forefathers' history," Professor H would scold him—because Quatre couldn't fool him for long with his nods and vacant stare. "Someday you're going to be in their shoes. You'd do yourself good to learn from their failures and successes."

As he stood at the back of the hall, looking down at the podium from the shadows near the door, he thought of his old professor again. And how he had never suspected as a boy the double life his tutor had been forced to lead: a civil servant for the Winner family on the one hand, an agent of Colony separatists on the other.

The professor who spoke now neither looked not sounded anything like the Professor H of Quatre's memory. But little had changed from what Quatre did remember. Maybe the years hadn't been as kind to him as they had been to the others—after all, Quatre told himself, hadn't _he _borne the brunt of all they'd been through ten times worse than any of them?—but in voice he hadn't aged at all. If Quatre closed his eyes, he would still see the young man he'd once considered one of his closest friends, and his greatest inspiration.

How many of the students who filled the tiers of seats here, who listened rapt to their own professor, had the faintest inkling of who he was, or what he used to be? They listened to his voice day in and out, soaked up his lectures, and had access to his bio on the university's database. But Quatre would have betted his empire that none of them so much as suspected the truth. They had no way of knowing they weren't being told half the story.

"As the great human migration to Space began, it became an escape from the sins of tribal conflict, disease, environmental damage, and overpopulation that afflicted life on Earth. For the first time in history, humans were able to live independently of their Mother Earth. Self-sustaining and self-governing, they were free societies in all but name. It's estimated as much as fifteen percent of Earth's population at that time moved in a mass exodus to the newly opened colonies, encouraged by the promise of a better life and brighter future.

"But it also came at great risk, and expense. Radiation, and continued exposure to less-than-Earth-gravity environments led to a whole slew of new disorders, cancers, and lowered fertility rates. Not to mention, the fragility of the colonies themselves, which could be damaged or even destroyed by an impact with even a small Near-Earth Object.

"Considering the inherent vulnerability of the space colonies, the situation was ripe for insecurity, resentment, and mistrust. Colonists feared their dependence on Earth resources in the early days of space development would leave them enslaved to Earth governments. On the other side, the governments of Earth feared losing what dwindling control they still had in Space. Despite birthrates, they expressed fears of a second human race taking hold in Outer Space, one with superior technology that might turn around and control _them._

"So, who was right? Mobile suits were developed in space for the mining of resources and construction, but perfected for military use on Earth. Both sides made use of them to the utmost during the Eve Wars, but to what end? It could be said that each side was only out to preserve its way of life. But when those goals conflict, who's to say which one is right? Can there be a right answer when the human race itself is at stake?"

The bell rang, cutting the professor off in mid-thought. The rustle of students' computers going back into bags almost drowned out his voice as he said: "Remember, there will be a test tomorrow on chapters ten through twelve. If you haven't started the reading, now would be a good time."

A few boys groaned their half-hearted dissent as they pushed past Quatre toward the doors. As the students filed past, many of them lost in conversation, none seemed to recognize him through his simple disguise. Few even bothered to look up.

The professor didn't acknowledge Quatre's presence as he organized his notes, but Quatre knew he hadn't gone unnoticed. "So," he said as he made his way to the podium, taking in the expanse of the hall now that the lights were up, "this is what you've made of yourself. A professor of political science."

"I take it it isn't what you expected."

"Maybe not, but now that I've seen you in action, I find it incredibly fitting. You do have a gift when it comes to finding the right words to get through to people. Besides, I've learned I shouldn't be surprised by anything you do, Heero."

Heero looked up at him at that name, and now Quatre could see the faintest of lines around his old friend's eyes, even if the eyes themselves had not been dimmed or dulled in any way by the twelve years of peace since they had last seen each other. The same keen spark shone deep inside them even as he said, "You shouldn't read too much into it, Quatre. Most of these kids are only here to fulfill their credit requirements."

Quatre had to smile. It was just the sort of thing his old friend would say. "Downplay it if you want, but I know you. You're still one of us. We're all doing our part to ensure the world never gives rise to other Quatre Winners, or Heero Yuys."

Wufei and Trowa were no different, one choosing the path of the enforcer of the peace, the other hoping to teach by the example of his past. Even Duo, in what was perhaps the purest way of all of them, was doing his best to lay the God of Death to rest by bringing new life into the world. "What better way to avoid repeating the mistakes of the past than to impart the wisdom of one who's witnessed them first-hand on the next generation."

"It's a pretty one-way relationship. I talk, they listen. They do if they want to pass with a decent grade, anyway."

"Maybe that's true. But out of every class, there will be at least a few who always remember you. Maybe not your name or your face, but they'll remember something that you taught them. Something they hear here will stick with them for the rest of their lives, and it will be because of you, Heero."

Heero's grunt indicated to Quatre that he wasn't too far from the mark, though Heero would never admit it in words.

"I'm sure talk like that is what won you the general election by a landslide," he said. The slightest of smiles on Heero's lips showed his pride more clearly than words could. "You had even my class won over. They voted you in by a margin of over thirty points."

Quatre whistled. "Not bad. If only they were all eligible to vote in L4."

"To be fair, five percent of the votes went to a cartoon mouse who I'm pretty sure isn't a viable candidate." Quatre enjoyed a light laugh at that, but Heero abruptly sobered. "You shouldn't have come here, Quatre."

Quatre expected no less from him after so a long absence. He'd come prepared for a battle. Maybe he should have been grateful they got through as many pleasantries as they did before Heero brought up the inevitable.

"If it makes you feel any better, I don't think any of your students recognized me. They all seemed too preoccupied to notice, anyway."

"That's not what I meant. There was a reason I left the way I did," Heero said as he threw the last of his notes into his bag, "and I would have appreciated your honoring it."

"If you thought you would be too risky an acquaintance to any of us, that still doesn't justify dropping off the map without a word. We all care about you—"

"Did you consider the possibility that I just didn't want to see any of you?"

The idea took Quatre aback, if only momentarily. If that were true, he would try to understand, though he didn't know what he might have done to offend Heero. But experience had taught Quatre better than to take his old friend at his word. Now more than ever. "No. I don't believe you mean that, Heero. At least, not enough to go to the lengths you did to get away from us."

The wall Heero erected around himself might just as well have been made of glass, for as easily as Quatre saw right through it, as if no time at all had passed between them. It was easier for Heero this way, Quatre knew, less complicated to keep the rest of them at a distance; but Heero wasn't so selfish as to do it entirely for his own good.

"But it really doesn't matter," Quatre amended. "I didn't come here to ask you whyyou left. I don't blame you for it, either. That's all water under the bridge. I came here because it's been so long—"

"Relena told you where I was."

It wasn't a question. But nor did it seem like an indictment.

"I sort of weaseled it out of her," Quatre admitted, flashing an apologetic smile under downcast eyes. "She had every intention of keeping your whereabouts a secret. I want you to know that. She only told me if I swore on pain of death that I wouldn't tell the others."

"I guess I should have known she'd figure out where I was eventually." Shouldering the messenger bag that carried his papers, Heero switched off the podium light and stepped down. "Well, if you came here expecting the Heero Yuy you remember, I'm sorry, Quatre, but you wasted your time. There's no one here by that name, and I have papers to grade and an exam to prepare for tomorrow—"

"I got your letter, Heero."

It was a last-ditch effort on Quatre's part, as there was no way he could have known whether those words would have meant half as much to Heero as they did to him—or even anything at all after all this time. But he had to say something, or else let his old friend slip away and prove Heero's assertion that this trip had been taken in vain.

But Heero did stop, and turned around. "I'm not sure I know what you're talking about."

"The letter you left Wufei to give to me," Quatre said, taking a step toward him. "After the Second Eve War. Don't you remember? You wrote it so that it might give me hope going into the new era. You knew that, as someone in such a prominent place in the political sphere, I had more opportunities to falter along the way than the others did, with bigger consequences. You said you wrote it, Heero, so that when I stumbled I might pick myself up and keep moving. You knew just how lost I would feel after the war, and you believed in me enough to want to ease my burden."

Just like you always did. Giving me permission to set aside my worries for a while and play with those dogs when permission was what I desperately needed. Knowing precisely when I could handle the responsibilities of a leader, when I was my most vehement doubter myself.

Quatre shook his head. "I didn't know how much I needed to hear that from you again. Until I did. That letter helped me out of a dark place, Heero. I needed to thank you for that. In person."

"And you've waited the last twelve years just to do that?" Heero's eyes softened; incredulousness was still a look he wore awkwardly.

Quatre couldn't help a smile. "As a matter of fact, I only found out about the letter a few months ago. Wufei had had it all that time. He told me it changed his life. I think it was what finally convinced him to stay with the Preventers—although I'm sure Ms. Po had a lot to do with that, too. From the way he tells it, he owes his life's work to you. And that, I think," Quatre said, sobering, "is the greatest honor anyone can ever receive."

Heero was too humble to agree, but he didn't refute Quatre's assertion either. Quatre wondered if he'd ever suspected, when he handed that small piece of paper to Wufei, with instructions to pass it on for him, that it would have the impact it did, on whom it did.

"That's why I couldn't blame him for taking so long to deliver it," Quatre said. "Not when I saw how much it meant to him. Besides, if he'd given it to me when you'd intended him to, I might not have been as ready to receive its message."

Heero considered that in silence. And Quatre had another chance to examine his old friend. The same calm poise was there, even as Heero had grown taller and older. He dressed the part of a professor, but there was still an air of apathy toward his outward appearance: his hair mussed, his clothing in need of ironing and seemingly at odds with his personality, as if he had taken over a dead man's wardrobe.

In the years since the war, Wufei and Duo had found their sources of stability, and Trowa had discarded his various masks in favor of being himself, having found who that self was. Yet Heero, for all the peace he might have found here t the university, was still an intensely internal person, a trait which made him perfect for the scholarly life but just as much a conundrum to Quatre as he ever was.

Then again, maybe Heero had moved on just as much as they had, but in his own way. Perhaps he had made other friends among the faculty and staff, friends he saw socially outside of work, difficult as that was for Quatre to picture. Or maybe Heero was one of those rare people who preferred, were even happiest in loneliness—in which case, Quatre couldn't help envying him his freedom, if only a little bit.

"Is that all you came here for?" Heero eventually said. "To thank me?"

Quatre sighed, knowing his time was up. "More or less. And to see with my own eyes that you were alive and doing well. But I guess now that my mission is complete, there's no reason for me to stick around and get in your way."

Heero had made it quite clear he did not want to be disturbed, let alone by the ghosts of his past. As someone who had been in the same boat—and a rather intimate boat that was, the very few who could say they'd not only survived the Zero System but gone back for seconds—it was the least Quatre could do to bow out now, and honor his wishes.

"Maybe there isn't," Heero agreed, "but now that you're here, I think you owe it to me to catch me up on all that's happened while I've been gone."

A wide grin leaped onto Quatre's lips before he could censor himself. Hope filled him with warmth, but he knew better than to get too ahead of himself. "What about your papers, and tomorrow's exam?"

"I've got all night to work on it. I'm long overdue for this." A smile tried to break through Heero's facade as well, but he was a little better at holding it in. "We can talk in private back at my office. I wouldn't risk the cafeteria if I were you with a disguise like that."

"What's wrong with it?" In his flat cap and sweater vest, Quatre'd thought he would fit in swimmingly with the college crowd, and not stand out enough to draw attention.

"Nothing," Heero snorted, "if you're looking to be recognized. Come on. I'll make you a cup of coffee. Unless there's somewhere else you need to be."

His bodyguards would be waiting for him, but other than that, Quatre could assure him he had no prior engagements.

"Speaking of engagements," he said as they left through the stairwell door, "you must have heard about Trowa and Dorothy by now."

Heero nodded sagely. "We had an interesting debate about conflict of interest in class when the news came out."

"I'm sure those two would appreciate their private life being used as a teaching tool," Quatre laughed.

"I honestly couldn't care less what they do behind closed doors, but they can't pretend their union doesn't have very public repercussions. I just hope they tread lightly where this mobile suit business is concerned, and keep in mind what it was we were all fighting for."

"You could always call them up yourself, give them a piece of your mind."

"Somehow I don't think they would appreciate it after all these years. Please tell me Duo hasn't done anything as reckless."

"Well, that depends on your definition," Quatre said, smiling to himself. Not that he saw their old friend as reckless at all. With the due date approaching fast, Hilde's pregnancy was going better than the couple could have hoped in all their history together, and Duo was as excited as ever to become a father.

It was just another reminder of how far the five of them had come since the war, and the gundams.

And yet, as Quatre tried to carry on a conversation, with Heero playing the devil's advocate at every turn, some things felt like they hadn't changed a bit. As the world changed around them, as the war generation grew up and grew older, and found themselves preaching to children who had been too young to remember the tribulations they experienced, it was nice to know there were some points of constancy that could be relied on. Like Heero's sharp wit, and martyrish tendencies.

And Quatre's willingness to forgive him everything, in a heartbeat.

-o-

_Quatre, I'm writing this to you because in the era we're now approaching, voices like yours are going to be needed most of all, if the human race is to survive this peace. The road ahead is not going to be easy, especially for people like you whose lot it now falls to to lead the way. _

_I know you didn't ask for this responsibility, but you _were_ born for it. And not just because you are a Winner. You possess a strength inside you that few people have, let alone ever find in their lifetimes. Zero recognized it. I think you recognized it yourself when you used the system again, and found it couldn't control you any longer._

_Now, once again, you have a responsibility to the world to use that strength, Quatre, and I know you will use it for good. _

_There will be times when you doubt the path you've chosen is the right one. But it is men who were convinced they could not fail who made the greatest mistakes. There will always be doubt, and that is nothing to be afraid of. Doubt is what keeps us centered. If we use it wisely, and don't let it control us or lead us into inaction, even doubt can be a force for great change._

_We are all colonies in and of ourselves, Quatre. Each man and woman in the Earth Sphere, living and dead. Each of us carries our own momentum, and each of us carve our own path through space and time. Each one of us turning, forever and ever. Where your own path leads is up to you, and you alone._

_Keep turning._


End file.
